Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 92

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006

USA > Ohio > Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I > Part 92

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

David Abbott, as the first purchaser of land in the township, with a view to its occu- pancy as a permanent "scttler," deserves some notice in this brief sketch. Mr. Abbott was a native of Brookfield, Mass. He was educated at Yale College. His health failed, and he was obliged to forego a diploma by leaving college in the earlier part of his senior year. He soon after entered upon the study of the law, and located himself at Rome, Oneida county, N. Y., whence he came to Ohio, in 1798, and spent a few years at Willoughby, whence he removed to Milan in 1809. He was sheriff of Trumbull county when the whole Western Reserve was em- braced within its limits; was a member of the convention for the formation of the Con- stitution of the State, previous to its admis- sion to the Union, in 1802; was one of the electors of President and Vice-President in 1812; clerk of the supreme court for the county, and repeatedly a member of both houses of the State legislature. He was a man of eccentric habits, and his life was filled up with the stirring incidents peculiar to a pioneer in the new settlements of the West. He several times traversed the entire length of Lake Erie, in an open boat, of which he was both helmsman and commander, and in one instance was driven before a tem- pest diagonally across the lake, a distance of more than a hundred miles, and thrown upon the Canada shore. There was but one per- son with him in the boat, and he was em- ployed most of the time in bailing out the water with his hat, the only thing on board capable of being appropriated to sneh use. When the storm had subsided and the wind veered about, they retraced their course in the frail craft that had endured the tempest unscathed, and after a week's absence were hailed by their friends with great satisfaction, having been given up as lost. Mr. Abbott died in 1822 at the age of 57. Of the other citizens who have deceased, and whose names deserve honorable mention as having contrib- uted in various ways to the prosperity of the town, are Ralph Lockwood, Dr. A. B. Har- ris and Hon. G. W. Choate.

The religious societies of the place are a Presbyterian, Methodist and Protestant Epis- copal church, each of which enjoys the stated

580

ERIE COUNTY.

preaching of the gospel, and is in a flourish- ing state. The two former have substantial and valuable church edifices. The latter soci- ety has one in process of erection.

In 1832 a substantial and commodious brick edifice was erected as an academy, fur- nishing, beside two public school-rooms and suitable apartments for a library and appa- ratus, ten rooms for the accommodation of students. The annual catalogue for the last ten years has exhibited an average number of about 150 pupils.

In 1833 a company of citizens, who had been previously incorporated for the purpose, entered vigorously upon the work of extend- ing the navigation of Lake Erie to this place by improving the navigation of the river some five miles from its mouth and excavat- ing a ship canal for the remaining distance of three miles. After much delay, occasioned by want of funds, and an outlay of about $75,000, the work was completed, and the first vessel, a schooner of 100 tons, floated in the basin July 4, 1839. The canal is capable of being navigated by vessels of from 200 to 250 tons burden. The chief exports of the place are wheat, flour, pork, staves, ashes, wool and grass seeds. The surrounding country is rapidly undergoing the improve- ments incident to the removal of the primi- tive forests, and with the increased product- iveness the business of the town has rapidly increased.

The value of exports for the year 1844 was $825,098 ; of this, more than three-fourths consisted of wheat and flour. The importa- tion of merchandise, salt, plaster, etc., for the same period, was in value $634,711.

TRAVELLING NOTES.

Ohio is the native State of those two emi- nent electricians, Chas. Francis Brush, born in Euclid, near Cleveland, in 1849, and Thomas Alva Edison. born in Milan in 1847. At noon, July 20th, I left the train at Milan to visit the birthplace of the latter. The station is down in the valley, and ascending the hill I gained the plain on which the vil- lage stands. In the centre is a neat square of an acre covered with maples and ever- greens. On this stands a soldiers' monument surmounted by an eagle and inscribed with the names of Milan's dead heroes. No spot conld be more quiet. Scarcely a soul was in sight; the spirit of repose seemed to rest there in undisturbed slumber.

Two old men, octogenarians, gazed upon me as I neared them, and pausing in their presence I made known my errand, where- upon one of them, Mr. Darling, took me to Edison's birthplace. It is on Choate avenue, and now the residence of Mrs. Sarah Talcott. It is a neat brick cottage on the edge of a hill which overlooks the valley of the Huron, with a fine view, sixty or eighty feet below, of river, bridge, canal, railroad and rich farming country beyond. My venerable con- ductor could give me but a single reminis- cence of the inventor, and that was as a child in frocks, too young to read or spell, when he

saw him seated on the ground on the little village green, grasping a piece of chalk and

MUSS .ENG.CO.N.Y.

THOMAS ALVA EDISON.

copying on a board the letters of a store sign near by. It was a bright beginning ; an ordi- nary child would not have done such a thing.

In the evening Mr. Ashley, an elderly gen- tleman, the village jeweler, gave me some items. The father of Mr. Edison was from Canada ; the mother, originally a Miss Elliott, an American. He became a resident of Mi- lan about 1842. He was a man of magnifi- cent physique and so athletic that when at the war period, although about sixty years of age, not a single man in an entire Michi- gan regiment could equal him in length of running leap. His occupation in Milan was the making of shingles by hand from wood imported from Canada. He had a number of men under him, and it was quite an in- dustry. The wood was brought here in what, are called bolts ; a bolt was three feet long and made two shingles, was sawn in two by hand and then split and shaved. None but first-class timber could be used, and such shingles far outlasted those now made by machinery with their cross-grain cut. Mr. Ashley said he shingled his house in 1844, and now, after a lapse of forty-two years, it is in good condition.

The Edison family removed to Michigan, and they being in humble circumstances, young Edison at the age of twelve took the position of newsboy on the Grand Trunk line running into Detroit. The little schooling he received was from his mother, who had been a teacher, but he acquired the habit of read- ing, studied chemistry and made experiments when on the train.

Later he became interested in the opera- tions of the telegraph, which he witnessed in the railroad stations, and improvised rude means of transmitting messages from his father's house in Port Huron to that of a neighbor. Finally a station master, whose child he had rescued in front of an incoming

ERIE COUNTY.

581

train, taught him telegraph operating, when he followed that profession and experimented in electric science, with results so surprising and useful as to gain for him undying fame.

The original owner of the land on which Milan stands was John Beatty, a native of the north of Ireland. He was the largest landowner in the Fire-Lands and the grand- father of General John Beatty, who has favored us with this sketch of him, accom- panied with some racy anecdotes :

Among the more prominent of the early settlers of Erie county was John Beatty, for- merly of New London, Connecticut. His first visit to Ohio was made in 1810, at which time he bought some 40,000 acres within the present limits of Erie and Huron, of what were then known as the "Fire- Lands." In 1815 he removed with his family to this wilderness and built his first residence five miles south of Sandusky, on what is still known to the older residents of

MOSS ENCEONI

Geo. W. Edmondson, Photo , Norwalk, 1886. BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS A. EDISON, MILAN.

that section as the "stone-house place." When the township of Perkins was organized Mr. Beatty was made its first clerk. Subse- quently he was appointed postmaster, and for many years thereafter he served the pio- neers as justice of the peace. About 1828 he removed to Sandusky, and in 1833 was elected mayor of that city. He died in 1845, and is still remembered as an upright, intelli- gent, warm-hearted, hospitable gentleman. 'The church edifice now standing on the pub- lic square of Sandusky, and occupied at this date by the Lutherans, was built at his cost and donated by him to the Wesleyan Method- ist Society.

John Beatty was a local preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and from 1815 to 1819 on almost every Sabbath met the pioneers in their log school-houses or at their homes and addressed them very acceptably on religious subjects. He was, however, a hot-tempered, impulsive, generous, obstinate Irishman, who never succeeded in reaching that degree of perfection which enabled him to love his enemies and offer the left cheek to an adversary who had smitten him on the right.

An Accommodating Postmaster .- In 1816, or thereabouts, a post-office was established and Beatty appointed postmaster. The era of cheap transportation and of cheap postage had not arrived. The settlers were poor ; few of them could raise the shilling with which to pay the postage on a letter, but it was hard to have it withheld simply because they

were poor and had no money. The new post- master proved equal to the occasion ; he gave them their letters and never made returns to the department. When called upon to do so, he replied that he had received no money from the office, and therefore had none to return, and instead of being indebted to the government, the latter was in fact indebted to him. This sort of logic, however satisfac- tory to the settlers, was by no means pleasing to the Post-Office Department, and so the government in 1819 discontinued the office, and thus afforded Mr. Beatty greater leisure to look after the spiritual welfare of his neighbors.

He was the original proprietor of the land on which the town of Milan now stands ; the site on the banks of the Huron river was naturally a very pretty one. Frederick Chris- tian Deucke, a Moravian missionary, had, in 1804, established a mission there and called the place Petquoting-a very handsome name by the way and one which the people should never have abandoned. In 1814 Mr. Ebene- zer Merry, having bought the place, laid out a village, and in honor of the first owner called it Beatty.

An Audacious Seizure .- Among the first, if not the first vessel built in what is now Erie county, was one built by Abijah Hewitt, Eleazer Bell and a man named Montgomery on the bay shore a few miles southeast of Sandusky. In one of its first voyages it brought to Sandusky a cargo comprising a stock of general merchandise for Mr. Beatty,

582

ERIE COUNTY.

and among other things a cask of brandy which had not been entered at the custom house. The vessel was consequently seized and subsequently confiscated. Mr. Beatty's merchandise was put under lock and guard and the case reported to the department. The mails moved slowly in those days; time passed, and conscious of no fault on his part respecting the matter, Beatty grew impa- tient, and finally called his friends about him, drove his teams onto the wharf, put revenue officers and their employés aside, broke open the doors of the warehouse, and carried off his merchandise. All this was not difficult to do ; the troublesome part of the affair came afterward, and resulted not from the cask of smuggled brandy, but from the violent and unwarrantable manner in which he had re- gained possession of his goods. The United States government was a big thing, even then, and no single citizen could afford to defy it, as Mr. Beatty discovered some years afterward when compelled to pay the costs and penalties growing out of this unfortunate transaction.

The Candle Story .- While a resident of New London, Connecticut, a boy stole from Mr. Beatty a box of candles; the thief was promptly arrested and arraigned before a magistrate; a witness appeared who testified that the boy was guilty as charged, and Beatty being called to prove the value of the property, swore that "the candles were worth four dollars, every penny of it." Under the law respecting petty offence at that time in force in Connecticut, when the property sto- len was worth from four dollars and upward, the penalty was whipping at the post ! The magistrate was about to pass sentence, when Beatty realized for the first time the terrible nature of the punishment ; his anger had by this time cooled, and a feeling of pity for the boy supplanting every other emotion, he took the witness stand again and said: "If it please your honor I desire to correct my testi-

mony. I swore that the candles were worth four dollars, but I omitted to add that that was the retail price; as the boy took a whole box I'll put them to him at three dollars and thirty-three cents." The boy was not whipped.

Jay Cooke's Start .- Mr. Pitt Cooke once told me how his brother Jay happened to get into the banking business, and as nearly as I can recollect it was as follows : The Cookes were living in a house on Columbus avenue (Sandusky), near the present site of the Second National Bank. One day, when the family were seated at the dinner table, Eleu- theros Cooke, the father, said in a spirit of pleasantry : "Well, boys, you must look out for yourselves. I have sold this house to 'Squire' Beatty, and we have no home now." Jay was the only one who took the matter seriously. He obtained a situation in a store that afternoon, subsequently accompanied his employer to Philadelphia, and this opened the way for him to the position of clerk in a banking house, and from this humble start in life he became the financial agent of the United States.

The Rev. Alvan Coe, a very worthy and devout man, at an early day established a school for Indian boys, on the Fire-Lands in the vicinity of Milan, where he sought to instruct them in the mysteries of religion and teach them to read and write. The father of one of the Indian boys came over from the Sandusky river to visit his son, and while lingering in the vicinity wandered into a distillery. As was the custom in those days, the proprietor offered him a cup of whiskey. The Indian shook his head, and with much dignity said: "My boy tell me, Mr. Coe say, Ingin no drink, good man : go up much happy. Ingin drink, bad man : go down burn much." Then looking wistfully at the whiskey he picked it up, and raising it slowly to his lips said : "Maybe Mr. Coe tell d-n lie," and drank it down.

BERLIN HEIGHTS is a village on the line of the N. Y. St. L. & C. R. R., which has three churches and about 500 inhabitants. Census of 1880 was 424. School census 1886, 208 ; Hugh A. Myers, superintendent. It is the largest of the three villages of Berlin township, the other two being Ceylon and Berlinville. The township of Berlin from a small beginning has become noted for the perfection of its various fruits and the skill of its horticulturists. The proximity to the lake prevents damaging frosts, and the soil is well adapted to the apple, pear, peach, and grape. The pioneers at an early day were determined to have orchards, and began to plant trees before the ground was clear of the forests. Canada was the nearest place from whence fruit-trees could be obtained, and in 1812 John Hoak and Mr. Fleming, of Huron, crossed the lake, and returned with a boat-load of trees, apple and pear. Some of these old trecs are now standing, vigorous, and of enormous size and productiveness. One of the pear trees is seventy feet in height, with a girth of eight feet nine inches eighteen inches from the ground ; an apple tree is over nine feet in girth.

A quarter of a century ago Berlin Heights widely attracted attention from the organization therein of a Socialistic or Free Love society ; only a single citizen of the township was identified with the movement, its supporters being drawn from various States. Three successive communities were established and each failed.

583

ERIE COUNTY.

The last was the Berlin Community, or Christian Republic ; it commenced in 1865, and had twelve adult members and six children, and lived about one year. The Socialists started journals, which had in succession brief careers, but striking names, as Social Revolutionist, Age of Freedom, Good Time Coming, The New Republic, The Optimist and Kingdom of Heaven, etc. One of the papers, The Age of Freedom, issued in 1858, was so obnoxious that twenty Berlin women seized the mail-sack which Frank Barry, the editor, had brought on his shoulders to the post-office, loaded with copies, and made a bonfire of them in the street.

The author of the historical sketch of Berlin Heights, from which the foregoing items are derived, says : " The drifting to this section of so many individuals who, to use their own phrase, were 'intensely individualized,' and who remained after the complete failure of their schemes, has had an influence on the character of the town. They engaged in fruit-growing, have multiplied the small farms, and added to the prosperity and intellectual life of the people. From the beginning their honesty was never questioned, however mistaken their ideas." This author, Hud- son Tuttle, was born here in 1836, in a log-cabin, on the spot where he now has a productive fruit-farm of between 200 and 300 acres of orchards and vine- yards. He is known to the outside world by his spiritnalistic and other works, and his wife, Mrs. Emma Tuttle, by her two volumes of poems : "Blossoms of Our Spring" and songs which have been set to music, "'s " My Lost Darling," "The Unseen City," and " Beautiful Claribel."

HON. ALMON RUGGLES, the original sur- veyor of the "Fire-Lands," was a resident of Berlin and died in 1840 in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He came in 1805 from Dan- bury, Conn., to survey the " Sufferers' Lands," as the Fire-Lands were sometimes termed. In addition to his salary he was permitted to select one mile square anywhere on the lake shore within the limits of his survey at one

ALMON RUGGLES.

dollar per acre. He selected the land in the township of Berlin. His early life was a strug- gle with adversity, and he had but six months schooling. He obtained his first book by catching wood-chucks, tanning the skins and braiding them into whip lashes for market ; and later he became a school-teacher. He

was a man of great kindness of heart-had a store of general merchandise and trusted all those who could not pay. It was said of him that he might have been very rich had he been disposed to grind the face of poverty. He preferred to live more unselfishly and merit the confidence and respect of his fellows. He not only encouraged the early settlers with material aid, but with cheerful looks and kind words. He represented this senatorial district in the State legislature in 1816-17-19, when the district consisted of the counties of Ashtabula, Geauga, Portage, Cuyahoga and Huron. He was associate judge for several years under the old con- stitution. His ability, his integrity, his knowledge of the country and the people eminently qualified him for the places he filled. He was an earnest worker in the Whig party, and a personal friend of Gen. Harrison.

Mr. Tuttle, from whose township history the notice of Almon Ruggles is derived, draws a refreshing picture of virtue in his sketch of Rev. Phineas Barker Barber of Berlin. He was a Methodist preacher who died in 1877 at the age of eighty-four.

His ministry commenced in Ohio in 1830, when he could stand in his own door and shoot deer and other game, which he fre- quently did. During the fifty-eight years of his ministy he never received a dollar for preaching, but supported his family by hard labor on his farm. His endurance was won- derful. He preached every Sunday and his appointments were from five to twenty miles apart; in the early times he went through the wilderness on foot. He also attended on an average three funerals a week, and invaria- bly suffered with a sick headache after preaching. His long and useful life was filled with labor and adorned with love.

584

ERIE COUNTY.

HURON, on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Huron river, is nine miles east of Sandusky and fifty-six miles west of Cleveland, on the L. S. & M. S. and N. & H. Railroad. Newspaper : Erie County Reporter, Independent, D. H. Clock, pub- lisher. Churches: 1 Presbyterian, 1 Methodist and 1 German Evangelical. Bank : Huron Banking Co., V. Fries, president; H. W. Rand, cashier.

Manufactures and Industries .- One of the largest fishing industries on the lakes is located here, employing 150 men. About 500 tons are annually frozen during the winter months and 2,000 tons salted during the fall and spring. Its man- ufactures are tackle blocks, mast hoops and a patent shifting seat for top buggies.

Population in 1880. 1.038. School census in 1886, 371 ; C. K. Smoyer, super- intendent.

Huron has one of the best harbors on the lake, with about fifteen feet of water in the channel and room enough for all the ship- ping on the lake. The French had a trading- post at the mouth of the Huron river about the year 1749. The Moravian missionaries, consisting of a few white settlers and Indians, located on a part of the southeast corner of Huron and the northeast corner of Milan

townships, which they abandoned previous to the Revolutionary war.

In the latter part of the last century or be- ginning of this, John Baptiste Flemond or Fleming from Montreal opened a trading station and dealt with the Indians on the east bank of the Huron about two miles from its mouth. He at one time assisted the sur- veyors in surveying the Fire-Lands.

CASTALIA is a neat village on the line of the I. B. & W. and L. E. & W. Railroads at the head of Coal creek, five miles southwest of Sandusky City. It borders on a beautiful prairie of about 3,000 acres; was laid out in 1836 by Mar- shall Burton and named from the Grecian fount.

The phenomena presented by the Castalia Springs has excited considerable curiosity and interest. At Castalia a volume of water called Cold creek, which forms quite a river, flows up from several deep orifices in the limestone rock and supplies in its descent of fifty-seven feet to Sandusky bay, three miles distant, the motive power for several mills. Being fed by subterranean fountains it is not much affected by floods and drouths. In its natural channel this creek ran through a piece of prairie covering several hundred acres into a quagmire and " muskrat garden." It now runs nearly its whole length through an artificial channel or mill-racc.

In 1810 a grist mill was built near the head of Cold creek which ground corn until the settlers were driven away by the news of Hull's surrender. This was probably the first grist mill on the Fire-Lands.

Similar springs to the Castalia are found in all limestone countries. The water is so pure that the smallest particle can be seen at

the bottom, and when the sun is at the meridian all the objects at the bottom, logs, stumps, etc., reflect the hues of the rainbow, forming a view of great beauty. The con- stituents of the water are lime, soda, mag- nesia and iron, and it petrifies all objects, as grass, stumps, moss, etc., which come in contact with it. The water wheels of the mills upon it are imperishable from decay in consequence of their being incrusted by petri- faction. The water is very cold but never freezes, and at its point of entrance to the lake prevents the formation there of ice ; it main- tains nearly the same temperature summer and winter.

In 1870 Mr. John Hoyt procured a couple of thousand of eggs of the brook or speckled trout, made hatching troughs and was suc- cessful in raising trout on Cold creek. The stream is now well stocked with trout and is leased to two clubs of gentlemen for sporting purposes, "The Castalia Spring Club " and the " Cold Creek Trout Club."

The village of VENICE is on Sandusky bay, near the mouth of Cold creek, and on the L. S. & M. S. R. R. In the summer of 1817 the village was founded and the mill-race was begun to bring Cold creek to the present site of the Venice mills. The flouring mills here have performed a very important part in the development of the country. The Venice flouring mills, completed in 1833, established the first permanent cash market for wheat in the " Fire-Lands." The first 100 barrels of flour in the merchant work was sent to New York. On its arrival hundreds of people went to see it, for it was the first shipment of extra flour from Ohio, and some even predicted that in time Ohio might furnish them with several thousand barrels of flour a year.

Much of the flour made in Ohio before 1840 was sent West for market. In

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Historical collections of Ohio in two volumes, an encyclopedia of the state, Volume I, Part 92

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893 Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio Number of Pages: 1006

Author: Howe, Henry, 1816-1893
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Cincinnati : Published by the state of Ohio
Number of Pages: 1006