USA > Ohio > Historical collections of Ohio in three volumes ; an encyclopedia of the state : with notes of a tour over it in 1886 contrasting the Ohio of 1846 with 1886-90, Vol. III > Part 46
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arrival of one family after another 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 asking for whis- key. She could not feel that to " pull in the latch-string" was a sufficient exclusion of such visitors ; and in my mind's eye I seem now to see her frail form tugging at a heavy chest, with which to barricade the door be- fore she dared to sleep. It was, indeed, a relief and joy to feel at last that we had neighbors, and that our town was beginning to be inhabited. At the end of the second year from the commencement of the survey, there were, perhaps, twelve families, and the town had received its name, "Tallmadge."
Slowly the settlement of the town pro- ceeded, from 1807 to 1810. Emigration from Connecticut had abont ceased, owing to the stagnation of business from the European wars, and the embargo and other non-inter- conrse 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 pro- prietors, leaving behind his wife and five little children. The proprietors were immov- able. Some of his parishioners felt hard to- wards him because, having -made payments, he could not perfect their titles. With diffi- culty 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 defeat, and the dishonor that falls on one who cannot pay his debts." He lingered on a few years, supporting his family by trav- elling and selling "Scott's Family Bible" and other religious works, from house to house, and occasional preaching. He bore his misfortunes with Christian resignation, struggled on a few years with broken spirits and broken constitution, and died at Hart- ford, August 17, 1817. "My mother," said Dr. Bacon, "standing 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 andible utterance, "The blessing of the God of Ab- raham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, rest upon thec.' 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.' "
The village of Cuyahoga Falls is four miles northeast of Akron, on the line of the Pennsylvania canal and on the Cuyahoga river. Manufacturing is already carried on here to a large extent, and the place is perhaps destined to be to the West what Lowell is to the East. The Cuyahoga has a fall here of more than 200 feet in the distance of two and one half miles, across stratified rocks, which
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are worn away to nearly this depth in the course of this descent. In the ravine thus formed are a series of wild and picturesque views, one of which is repre- sented in an engraving on an adjoining page.
The Indians called Cuyahoga Falls "Coppacaw," which signifies "shedding tears." A Mr. O., an carly settler in this region, was once so much cheated in a trade with them that he shed tears, and the Indians ever afterwards called him Coppacaw.
The village was laid out, in 1837, by Birdseye Booth, grew rapidly, and in 1840 was the rival of Akron for the county-seat. It contains 1 Episcopal, 1 Wesleyan Methodist and 1 Presbyterian church, 1 academy, 7 mercantile stores, 1 bank, 1 insurance office, 4 paper, 2 flouring and 1 saw mill, 2 furnaces, 2 tan- neries, 1 fork and scythe, and 1 starch factory, 4 warehouses, and about 1,200 inhabitants.
The view was taken from near the Cleveland road, above the village, at Stow's quarry. On the right are seen the Methodist and Episcopal churches, in the centre the American House, and on the left the Cuyahoga river, the lyceum and Presby- terian church .- Old Edition.
CUYAHOGA FALLS is four and a half miles north of Akron, on the C. A. & C. and P. & W. Railroads. The Cuyahoga river furnishes abundant water-power for manufacturing purposes.
City Officers, 1888 : John T. Jones, Mayor; Frank T. Heath, Clerk ; George Sackett, Treasurer ; Orlando Wilcox, Solicitor ; George W. Hart, Street Commis- sioner ; Harry Westover, Marshal. Newspapers : Home Guest, Home Guest Publishing Company, editors and publishers ; Reporter and Western Reserve Farmer, Independent, E. O. Knox, editor and publisher. Churches : 1 Disciples, 1 Episcopal, 1 Congregational, 1 Methodist.
Manufactures and Employees .- Thomas Brothers, stoneware, 21 hands ; Camp & Thompson, sewer-pipe, etc., 50; Empire Paper Mill, 24; Phoenix Paper Mills, 14; Reeve & Chester, wire, 63; Glen Wire Manufacturing Co., 16; Sterling Chain and Manufacturing Co., 72; Jolm Clayton, carriages; William Barker, blacksmithing ; William Blong, carriages; C. Kittleberger, tannery, 9; Hoover & Co., flour, etc. ; David Hahn, cooperage ; George W. Smith, planing mill ; Turner, Vaughn & Taylor, machinery, 40 ; The Falls Rivet Co., 133; American Foundry and Machine Works, 9 .- State Report, 1887.
Population, 1890, 2,614. School census, 1888, 691 ; Frederick Schnee, super- intendent of schools. Capital invested in manufacturing establishments, $150,000. Value of annual product, $175,000 .- Ohio Labor Statistics, 1888.
Cuyahoga Falls has become a great place of resort for summer excursionists, and improved approaches, stairways, ete., have been constructed to make the ro- mantie glens and nooks more accessible to the visiting multitudes. The High Bridge, Lover's Retreat, Fern Cave, Observation Rock, Grand Promenade and Old Maid's Kitchen are some of the features that go to make up the romantic interest of this rock-bound gorge.
The beautiful Silver Lake is a short distance above Cuyahoga Falls. It is nearly a mile long and a third of a mile wide. Steamers ply on the lake. It is surrounded by woods with pienie grounds, and near it is a railroad station for the accommodation of visiting parties.
BIOGRAPHY.
JOHN BROWN, of Osawatomie, was born in Torrington, Com., May 9, 1800. For three generations his family were devoted to anti-slavery principles. ITis father, Owen Brown, in 1798, took part in the foreible rescue of some slaves claimed by a Virginia clergyman in Connecticut. At the age of five, JJohn Brown removed with his parents to Hudson, Ohio. Until twenty years of age he worked at farming and in his father's tannery. He then learned surveying. Later he
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Drawn by Henry Howe in 1846.
CUYAHOGA FALLS.
Drain by Henry Howe in 1816.
RAVINE AT CUYAHOGA FALLS.
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removed to Pennsylvania, and was postmaster at Randolph, Pa., under President Jackson. In 1836 he returned to Ohio; removed to Massachusetts in 1844; in 1849 purchased a farm and removed to Northern New York.
In 1854 five of his sons removed from Ohio to Kansas, settling near Osa- watomic, and their father joined them the following year, for the purpose of aiding the " Free-State Party."
The Brown family was mustered in as Kansas militia by the Free-State Party : their active participation in the Kansas troubles is a part of the history of the Union.
On the night of Sunday, Oct. 16, 1859, Captain Brown, with his sixteen men, captured Harper's Ferry and the United States Arsenal. The citizens of the town had armed themselves, and penned Brown and his six remaining men in the engine-house, when, on the evening of the next day, Col. Robert E. Lee ar- rived with a company of United States Marines. When Brown was finally captured, two of his sons were dead, and he was supposed to be mortally wounded. Brown was tried in a Vir- ginia court, and sentenced to death by hanging. On the day of his execution, he handed one of his guards a paper, on which was written the following :
"CHARLESTOWN, VA., Dec. 2, 1859. I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood .. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that withont very much blood- shed it might be done."
JOHN BROWN.
Rev. S. D. Peet, in the " Ashtabula County History," gives some interest- ing items. The means were so ont of proportion to the magnitude of the enter- prise that most men not acquainted with John Brown believed him to be insane ; but to those who knew him ; who knew the depth and fervor of his religions son- timents ; his unwavering trust in the Infinite; his strong conviction that he had been selected by God as an instrument in his hands to hasten the overthrow of American slavery ; to such he seemed inspired rather than insane. In a conver- sation I had with him the day he started for Harper's Ferry, I tried to convince him that his enterprise was hopeless, and that he would only rashly throw away his life. Among other things, he said, " I believe I have been raised up to work for the liberation of the slave ; and while the cause will be best advanced by my life, I shall be preserved ; but when that cause will be best served by my death, I shall be removed." The result proved that his sublime faith and trust in God enabled him to see what others could not see. He had so lived that, though dead,/ "his sonl went marching on."
Sanborn's " Life of John Brown," published by Roberts Brothers, Boston, is the most complete biography of him extant. We here give, in an original con- tribution from high authority in this county, some facts in his history not before published.
John Brown, of Osawatomie and Harper's Ferry, spent a large part of his youth in Hudson, and the incidents of his life there
throw much light upon his subsequent ca- reer. Space will permit the record of only a few
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of the " memorabilia " which might be gath- ered np. He was the son of Owen Brown, a tanner, one of the pioneers of the township ; a man of strong character, of many peculiari- ties, and of the most inquestioned integrity.
Owen Brown was an inveterate stammerer and a noted wit. He could not endure plac- idly any reference to his infirmity of speech, . and was never more witty and caustie in his retorts than when some well-intentioned party sought to help him to the word he was stani- mering for. On one occasion when, in an- swering the question of a stranger, his effort to give a desired word had become painful, the stranger kindly helped him to it; when his answer was, "Ba-Ba-Ba-Balaam ha-ha- had an a-a-ss to speak for him too."
The stranger rode on without an answer to his question.
Owen Brown's first wife was a Miss - of a large family in IIndson and the neigh- borhood, in which there was a strong heredi- tary tendency to insanity. All the members were peculiar, eccentric, and many of them insane. John was a son of this first wife, and in early life disclosed the influence of this insane tendency. He was noted for his pranks and peculiarities, which reverence for the stern government of his father could not suppress. This goverment was based upon the rule laid down by Solomon, not to spare the rod ; and the old man was as faithful in tanning the hides of his boys as he was in tanning the hides pickled in his vats ; and this practice gave John an early opportunity to disclose his penchant for military tactics.
When a mere lad, having committed an offenee which by sad experience he knew would bring the accustomed chastisement, he repaired to the barn, the well-known place of discipline, and prepared for it by so arrang- ing a plank that one stepping upon it would be precipitated through the floor and upon the pile of agricultural implements stored beneath it; and then, with apparent childish innocence, returned to the house. Soon the pater familias acensed him of the offence, and invited him to an interview in the barn. After a paternal lecture, responded to by sup- plications for merey, and promises " never to do so again," in obedience to orders he meek- ly stripped off coat and vest, and, with ap- parent resignation, submitted himself to the inevitable. As the first blow was abont to fall, he dexterously retreated across the con- cealed chasm, and the good father was found to be as one " beating the air."
The ancient Adam in him was aronsed, and leaping forward, with more than nsnal vigor in his arm, as the cutting blow was about to descend, he stepped upon the treacherous plank and landed upon the plows and har- rows below. John retired from the scene. With difficulty the father resend himself from his position, and with bruised and chafed limbs repaired to the house. John eseaped further interviewing for this offence, but tradition is silent as to the canse, whether, before the father's recovery, the offence was deemed outlawed, or whether his own expe-
rience had given him some new ideas as to the effect of the abrasion of a boy's entiele.
Passing over many similar events of his boyhood, his first military campaign should not be omitted. After reaching his majority and becoming the head of a family, he was the owner of a farm in Northeastern Hudson, upon which there was a mortgage that he was finally unable to raise, and proceedings in court were had for its foreclosure. Brown repaired to his neighbor, Chamberlain ; told him he could not keep the farm, and asked him to bid it in. This he agreed to do and did. But after the sale was made and deed given, Brown asked for the privilege of re- maining on the premises for a little time as tenant. The request was granted. When this time had elapsed he refused to vacate. Proceedings in ejectment were had, and the officers of the court turned him out of the house. Upon the withdrawal of the officers he again took possession, barricaded the house, armed his family with shot-guns and rifles, and prepared to hold the fort. Re- peatedly arrested and sued, he responded to the warrant or summons, but left his garrison in possession of the stronghold. The contest. was protracted into the winter, when an he- roie scheme, like that of the Russians in burning Moscow, compelled the retreat of our general. On some real or fictitious charge, warrants were obtained in another township for the arrest of the eccentric gar- rison. While the warrants were served some half hundred of Chamberlain's friends were ambushed in the immediate neighborhood, and as the officer and his prisoners passed out of sight they took possession of the premises ; and as the building was of little value they quickly razed it to the foundations, carried off all material which would suffice even for building a hut, and rendered the place un- tenable. When Brown and his garrison re- turned, he found a hasty retreat the only alternative. It was not as disastrous as Na- poleon's retreat from Moscow, but it ended the campaign.
Ilis subsequent experience in wool-growing was not more successful. Simon Perkins, then a well-known capitalist of Akron, fur- nished the capital for the enterprise, and Brown furnished the brains. He soon be- came as enthusiastic over fine-wooled sheep as he afterwards became over the woolly- headed slave and brother, but when the busi- ness was closed out, the share contributed to the capital by Brown was all that remained.
His experiences in Kansas and at Harper's Ferry are too well known to need repetition here ; but some account of his last visit to Hudson and the neighborhood, just before his invasion of Virginia, is important to a right understanding of his character. After his trial and conviction in the Virginia court, M. C. Read, an attorney of Hudson, was em- ployed by a brother of John Brown to take affidavits of parties whom he interviewed just before leaving for Harper's Ferry, to be laid before Governor Wise, with the hope of obtaining a commutation of his sentence. It
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was found that he had approached many per- sons with solicitations of personal and pecu- niary aid, but these approaches were made with great shrewdness and caution. His real design was masked under a pretended scheme of organizing a western colony. In discuss- ing this, he adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of slavery ; to his work in Kansas ; and finally to his divine commission to overthrow the institution of slavery. His commission was from Jehovah ; his success was certain, because it was divinely promised, and divine direction to the employment of the proper means was assured. Affidavits of these parties were taken, showing the details of the conversation, and giving the opinion of the affiants that Brown was insane. They were laid before Governor Wise by C. P. Wolcott, then an attorney of Akron, and afterwards Assistant Secretary of War under President Lincoln. They produced no effect upon the Governor.
This unquestioning faith of Brown in his divine commission and in his promised suc- cess, accounts for his undertaking so gigantic a work with such inadequate means. He had read and believed that the blowing of ram's horns by the priests, and the shouting of the people with a great shont, had caused the walls of Jericho to fall down, because Je- hovah had so ordered it. He believed that, with a score of men poorly armed, he could conquer the South and overturn its cherished institution, because Jehovah had so ordered it, and had commissioned him for the work. His faith was equal to that of any of the old Hebrew prophets, but his belief in his divine commission was a delusion, resulting from pre-natal influence and the mental wrench and exhaustion of his Kansas experience.
The Rev. CHARLES B. STORRS, the first president of the Western Reserve College, was the son of the Rev. Richard S. Storrs, of Long Meadow, Mass., and was born in May, 1794. He pursued his literary studies at Princeton, and his theological at Andover,. after which he journeyed at the South, with the double object of restoring his health and preaching the gospel in its destitute regions.
In 1822 he located himself as a preacher of the gospel at Ravenna. In this situation he remained, rapidly advancing in the confidence and esteem of the public, until March 2, 1828, when he was unanimously elected professor of Christian theology in the Western Reserve College, and was indneted into his office the 3d of December following. The institution then was in its infaney. Some fifteen or twenty students had been collected under the care and instruction of a tutor, but no per- manent officers had been appointed. The government and much of the instruction of the college devolved on him. On the 25th. of August, 1830, he was unanimously elected president, and inaugurated on the 9th of February, 1831.
In this situation he showed himself worthy of the confidence reposed in him. Under his mild and paternal, yet firm and decisive ad- ministration of government, the most perfect discipline prevailed, while all the students loved and venerated him as a father. Under his auspices, together with the aid of compe- tent and faithful professors, the institution arose in public estimation, and increased from a mere handful to nearly one hundred stu- dents. For many years he had been laboring under a bad state of health, and on the 26th of June, 1833, he left the institution to travel for a few months for his health. He died on the 15th of September ensuing, at his broth- er's house in Braintree, Mass. President Storrs was naturally modest and retiring. Hle possessed a strong and independent mind, and took an expansive view of every subject that occupied his attention. He was a thor- ough student, and in his method of commu- nicating his thoughts to others peenliarly happy. Though destitute in the pulpit of the tinsel of rhetoric, few men could chain an, intelligent audience in breathless silence, by pure intellectual vigor and forcible illustration of truth, more perfectly than he. Some of his appeals were ahnost resistless. He ex- erted a powerful and salutary influence over the church and community in this part of the country, and his death was deeply felt. - Old Edition.
REV. DR. HENRY M. STORRS, the eminent Congregational divine, is a son of this the first President of the Western Reserve College. The father was one of the earliest and strongest to uplift his voice in behalf of the slave; and when he died, the then young but now venerable and deeply-revered WHITTIER paid to his memory the tribute of his humanizing verses : two of these are annexed :
Joy to thy spirit, brother ! A thousand hearts are warm, - A thousand kindred bosoms Are baring to the storm. What though red-handed Violence With sceret Fraud combine !
The wall of fire is round us, Our Present Help was thinc.
Lo,-the waking up of nations, From Slavery's fatal sleep, - The murmur of a Universe, - Deep calling unto Deep ! Joy to thy spirit, brother ! On every wind of heaven The onward cheer and summons Of FREEDOM'S VOICE is given.
Dr. LEONARD BACON, whose sketch of his father we have so largely drawn upon, was literally a child of the wilderness. His long life of usefulness closed
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at New Haven, Dee. 24, 1881, in his eightieth year. It had been incessantly devoted to the discussion of questions bearing upon the highest interests of man. He was a strong, independent thinker, and his writings upon vital topics so largely judicial as to carry conviction to the leading minds of the nation. Abraham Lincoln aseribed to a volume of Dr. Bacon on slavery his own clear and compre- hensive convictions on that subject. Leonard Bacon did more than any man who has lived in making clear to the popular apprehension, and in perpetuating to the knowledge of the coming generations the simple domestic virtues of the fathers ; the religions and political principles which governed them, and gave to the Amer- iean people their strongest, all-conquering element. In his Half-century sermon, preached in New Haven, March 9, 1875, Dr. Bacon gave an eloquent description of his boy-life here in Summit county, when all around was in the wildness of untamed nature :
"I think to-day of what God's providence has been for three and seventy years. I re- call the first dawning of memory and the days of my early childhood in the grand old woods of New Connecticut, the saintly and self-sac- rificing father, the gentle yet heroic mother, the log-cabin from whose window we some- times saw the wild deer bounding through the forest-glades, the four dear sisters whom I helped to tend, and whom it was my joy to lead in their tottering infancy-yes, God's providence was then ever teaching me.
"Our home life, the snowy winter, the blossoming spring, the earth never ploughed before and yielding the first crop to human labor, the giant trees, the wild birds, the wild flowers, the blithesome squirrels, the wolves which we heard howling through the woods at night but never saw, the red-skin savage sometimes coming to the door,-by these things God was making impressions on my soul that must remain forever, and without which I should not have been what I am."
A daughter of David Bacon, DELIA, was born at Tallmadge, February 2, 1811, and the next year she was taken with the family to Connecticut. Her early life was a bitter struggle with poverty, but she became a highly-educated and brilliant woman in the realms of ideality ; was a teacher and lecturer, and published " Tales of the Puritans" and " The Bride of Fort Edward," a drama.
A published account of her states that her chief delight was to read Shakespeare's plays and his biographies. The idea at length grew upon her that the plays were the work of the brilliant Elizabethan coterie and not of the actor and manager, Shakespeare. In opposition to the wishes of her family, she went to London in 1853 to publish her work on the subject. This she at last accom- plished, chiefly through the marked kindness of Hawthorne, then Consul at Liverpool, who was willing to listen to her argument, but never accepted it. Hawthorne's letters to her have a beautiful delicacy, though she must have tried his patience frequently, and sometimes repaid his generosity with re- proaches. Her book, a large octavo, never sold. The edition is piled up in London to- day. Carlyle took some interest in Miss Bacon, who came to him with a letter from Emerson. Carlyle's account of her to Emer- son is as follows :
"As for Miss Bacon, we find her, with her modest, shy dignity, with her solid character and strange enterprise, a real acquisition, and hope we shall see more of her now that she has come nearer to us to lodge. I have not in my life seen anything so tragically quixotie as her Shakespeare enterprise. Alas ! alas ! there can be nothing but sorrow, toil and utter disappointment in it for her !
I do cheerfully what I can, which is far more than she asks of me (for I have not seen a- prouder silent soul) ; but there is not the least possibility of truth in the notion she has taken up, and the hope of ever proving it or finding the least document that counte- nances it is equal to that of vanquishing the windmills by stroke of lance. I am often truly sorry about the poor lady ; but she troubles nobody with her difficulties, with her theories ; she must try the matter to the end, and charitable souls must further her so far. "
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