USA > Ohio > Erie County > History of Erie County Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 58
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
HISTORY OF OXFORD TOWNSHIP.
T OWNSHIP number five, in range twenty-three, is bounded on the north by Perkins, on the south by Ridgefield, east by Milan, and west by Groton. Its general aspect is not unlike those adjoining, being level, and diver- sified with three streams of water, the largest of which is the Huron River. This flows through the southeast corner of the township from the west, and passes through the corner of it on its way to Lake Erie. Pipe Creek and Crab Apple Creek are the only streams, beside the Huron River, in this town- ship, and the latter empties into it. The township was first colonized in the month of February, 1810, by six families from Conneaut, Erie county, Pa.
These early settlers were Jonathan Sprague, an old man who had served in the army of the Revolution as lieutenant. He built a cabin on the east bank of Pipe Creek, a quarter of a mile from Bloomingville. His son's family and three families of Dunhams settled between him and the present Bloom- ingville, and Linas Ensign settled a mile southwest of Bloomingville, on the farm occupied by John Paxton. In the month of July of the same year Thomas James and James Forsyth moved into the township. During that fall three others (named Nathan, Standish, and Wood) came, and were followed the next year by Thomas Hamilton, Dr. Hastings, John Dillingham, and Samuel McGill.
The survey of the township was made by Jabez Wright and Almon Rug- gles, assisted by Benjamin Drake as chain bearer, in 1810, and throughout the year there were large accessions to the township, but the following year this was checked by war with Great Britain and the cowardly surrender of the
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traitor Hull at Detroit, leaving the scattered settlements of Northwestern Ohio exposed. to the depredations of the Indians. The panic among the settlers became so great that many of them fled to older settlements for safety. The greater part of those who fled went to Mansfield, conveying their household goods and families on horseback and in wagons. We cannot picture the dis- comforts of that time with fear, sickness and suffering on every side. Fever and ague was almost as bad as the Indians, and the women and children suf- fered greatly by exposure during their journey. Those who remained behind proceeded at once to build a block-house for their protection in Bloomingville, and later a second one was built near it, and both enclosed with pickets as a better method of general protection. After this, until the close of the war, there were few additions to the settlement in Oxford. In an account written by F. D. Drake, whose father was prominently identified with the new country, is found a graphic description of those early days, from which the following extracts are taken :
" On the 16th of April, 1815, my father and his family, consisting of mother and four boys, left Erie, Pa., for our future home in Oxford township, where we arrived the 4th of May, having performed the journey of one hundred and sixty miles in nineteen days. My father had provided himself with a span of fine horses, a light wagon covered with linen stretched over hoops. All heavy articles were left to be forwarded by water to the mouth of the Huron. The road was so bad that, with the addition of a yoke of oxen which my father pur- chased in Cleveland to hitch ahead of the horses in bad places, we were unable to travel more than six or eight or ten miles a day."
He proceeds to describe the process of making new roads, cutting under- brush, laying a corduroy through marshy places, and at length tells of his ar. rival at their journey's end :
" We stayed at Jabez Wriglit's, who lived at that time on the west side of Huron River, about a mile from its mouth. He was surveyor and land agent. He was afterwards an associate judge of Huron county. His house was crowded that night with settlers on business connected with a sale of lands. Among the number was Major Joseph Strong, the first permanent settler of Lyme township. The major and my father had been neighbors in New York State, and as every vestige of a road had disappeared, he volunteered to guide us to his house. We started early next morning, the major ahead on horse- back as advanced picket, the team following; and the three boys, driving the oxen, bringing up the rear."
He then continues to give us the details of that eventful journey, of his impressions of the broad prairies, covered with tall grass of the brightest green, and their first trials as pioneers. There was little or no money in circulation in those days. A man might raise large amounts of grain, and own large numbers of cattle, and still not be able to raise money to pay his taxes. To
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borrow a dollar or even fifty cents was almost an impossibility, and whoever had it was looked upon as a rich man. In 1817 a man named Charles Lind- say moved from Dayton to near the head of Cold Creek, and having been con- nected with a wild cat bank in Dayton, he suggested to some of the most in- fluential men that they might start a bank at Bloomingville. It was just what they wanted, and a public meeting was called, and attended by most of the men of the township. It was resolved at once that a bank be established, and Abner Young should be president, and Charles Lindsay, cashier. The necessary amount was subscribed, and Lindsay was employed to go to Cincinnati to get the bills struck off, and attend the Legislature and get a charter. While he was gone, some of the others erected a banking house, which is still standing. Lindsay promised everything necessary to do a bogus banking business, except a charter. The Legislature was not doing that kind of business, and the thing was no go. A sale was therefore made, and Major Fåley bought the banking house, and Shirley and Youngs bought the balance of assets, consisting of notes, plates, etc.
Early troubles came to the settlers in many forms, and perhaps none was more distressing than the milk sickness that affected the cattle. It came sim- ultaneously with the attempt to have a bank, and the cause of it to this day remains a mystery. There are still places in our country where this is common, and the United States has offered a generous reward of many thousand dollars to whoever discovers the secret cause of its prevalence. In Oxford township they believed it was the result of the animals drinking from springs of mineral water, but this was disproved by the fact that a flock of sheep belonging to Thomas James, of Bloomingville, were pastured in a field where there was no stream, and yet a number of the flock were affected by it. Its effects on ani- mals was known as " trembles," and it was quite customary to see a fat calf, after sucking, walk a short distance, then begin to tremble, and in a little while fall down and die. The superstitious believed in witchcraft. Many people died from this poison, and their remains are buried at the forks of the roads a short distance east of Bloomingville, with no monument to tell the story of their lives in the new country to which they had come full of hope.
The first mill was always the most important step in the history of progress of a township, for upon the mills all families depended for food. In 1817 there was a mill in Venice, and in 1820 one at Milan, and one near the head of Cold Creek. A man named Powers had built one on the Huron River in Green- field township. This was built in the woods, and the lower part of the house holding the machinery was not enclosed. Mr. Drake gives us a graphic de- scription of this mill as he remembered it, when he took a grist there in his boyhood. He says: "The floor of the second story was five or six feet from the ground. About half way from the front door was a platform six feet high, on which the stones were placed. The presiding genius of this establishment
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was a very cross, lame man. Millers were then autocrats, and no appeal could be made from their decision, and one of their rules was that the person who brought a grist should bring it in and take it out. The state of the roads made it necessary to stay one night at the mill, and the night I stayed, ten or twelve others were there also. The clicking of the hopper, the sound of the water, the noise of people talking, and the singing of mosquitoes, precluded the possibility of sleep."
Bloomingville is situated in the northwestern part of the township, on the line of an Indian trail, near Pipe Creek. The ground is high and dry, and had been a favorite place as a camping-ground with the Indians before a white man's foot had touched it. The village was started in 1811, and laid out in 1817 by Abiathar Shirley and Abner Young, and its future was then very promising. It has ceased to grow much, and still remains a pleasant village, the centre of interest to the township. It was here that the first post-office was established in 1810, with Aaron Bigsby as postmaster. The first store was opened the year following by Nathan Wood. The first hotel was started in 1812 by Abiathar Shirley.
Election precincts were almost boundless in this township, owing to the sparsely settled country. What is now embraced in the townships of Oxford, Groton, Perkins, and a part of Margaretta, was then one precinct, and all elec- tions were held at Wheatsborough, since called Bloomingville. It was not until 1826 that Groton effected a separate organization.
Churches do not abound in Oxford township. There was no regular church organization until within the last twenty years, but there were religious meetings held long previous, and Father Gurley, an earnest Methodist, who settled early in the township, did much toward keeping alive an interest in re- ligious things. Somewhere near 1869 a Lutheran Church was formed near Prout's Station, and this has since grown to be a strong church and is in a very flourishing condition under the care of Rev. Enzling, of Sandusky. He goes to Prout's Station every second Sabbath, and is heartily in earnest in his work.
Schools were attended to when money was still a minus quantity, for these pioneers came from a land of books and knowledge, and whatever else must be sacrificed, their children must be educated. Ohio owes much of its pros- perity to this principle, and a traveler passing through its various townships is always impressed by the spacious and substantial school buildings that are seen in every township. In Oxford, the first school-house was built in 1810, while forests were still untouched and savages at home upon the soil. It stood half way between Pipe Creek and Bloomingville, and a term of school was kept in it during the winter of 1811 by Joseph Alby. There are now fine brick buildings throughout the township, and children never stop to contrast their surroundings with those of their ancestors.
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Oxford township seemingly furnishes light material for the historian, but with her history have been interwoven the lives of some of Ohio's most prom- inent persons. Notably among these names is that of Eleutheros Cooke, father of the well-known Jay and Pitt Cooke, of national reputation as bankers. Judge Caldwell's name is also interwoven with this township by incidents in his early life, so that, although Oxford has no large city or town, or even vil- lage, honor comes to it through the individuals that have belonged within her borders. In an oration delivered before the pioneers at their celebration in 1857, Hon. Eleutheros Cooke reviewed the causes of our country's growth and development, and then proceeded to speak of the changes wrought by fifty years in the Firelands. He went back to the year 1790, when Moravian mis- sionaries made a settlement on the Huron River, and then traced the rise and growth of prosperity, of institutions and military organizations that he had known. He pictured in graphic language the sufferings of the forefathers, and the wild alarm that was felt when Hull surrendered in 1812. He gives an in- cident of law in his own career, which cannot fail to interest the reader of primitive customs. We quote his own words :
"Until after my settlement among them, the ordinary log-cabin, as well for the dwelling of the rich and poor as for the church, school-room and court- house, constituted the proudest architectural monuments of pioneer taste and extravagance. I well remember that the richest and most highly self-prized laurels I ever won at the bar were plucked at a little seven by nine temple of justice built of logs, at the old country seat, three miles below Milan. If my honorable friend, Judge Lane, were here to-day, he would at once call to mind a suit in which he and I were pitied against earh other, and which we brought to an amicable settlement by a little cyphering on a huge log, breast high, which lay near the doorway."
Then he spoke of the lack of markets for their produce, and the beginning of the Erie Canal. He describes the raising of the first shovelful of earth just forty years before, near Rome, N. Y., when the enterprise was begun, and all the glorious prosperity that followed its completion, only to be excelled by the advent of steam and rapid transit, thus showing the march of empire and trans- formations wrought by fifty years. He also speaks of an account he had re- cently seen of the coming of Mr. Nathaniel Deane to Cleveland in 1798, when it took ninety-two days for himself and family to make the journey from Chatham, Conn., and then Mr. Cooke contrasts this with the statement that his son had just left Sandusky for Philadelphia, and the next morning, before breakfast, he had heard of his safe arrival. This was in 1857, when steam and electricity were recognized factors in all progress.
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CHAPTER XXIX.
HISTORY OF VERMILLION TOWNSHIP.
T TOWNSHIP number six, range twenty. Of the nine townships that form Erie county, this is the most northeasterly and has the largest amount of land bordering on Lake Erie. It was named from the river that passes to its outlet in the lake through the township.
Vermillion township is bounded on the north by Lake Erie, on the east by Brounhelm township, Loraine county, south by Berlin and Florence, and west by Berlin. The natural appearances are distinctly outlined, the northern por- tion being level, and the southern alternating in ridges and lowlands. There are but few marshes, and these have been reclaimed and cultivated. The soil is variable, having in different localities different qualities-gravel, clay, sandy, and marl. Iron ore has been found in paying quantities, and numerous stone quarries abound.
Streams are not large, and but three in number. The largest is the Ver- million, rising in Ashland county, running north through Huron and Loraine counties, and emptying into Lake Erie, near the eastern boundary of the town- ship. The Indians gave it a name suggested by the paint they found on its banks, and the smallest stream of the three, known as Sugar Creek, received its name from the same source, because at its mouth was a mound resembling a sugar-loaf, as well as the fact that the Indians made sugar from the sugar orchards along the stream. The other stream, La Chapelle, rises in Huron county, and passes through Florence, Wakeman, and Vermillion. Natural trees that formerly abounded, but are now nearly gone, were mostly dif- ferent varieties of oak, whitewood, black walnut, maple and hickory.
Wild animals, until within a few years, were found here in great abundance. Wolves, deer, wild-cats and bears were all at home here, and the wolves be- came very troublesome to the early settlers by continual depredations on their sheep and swine.
Ancient mounds and fortifications have been discovered that prove this at some time in the distant past to have been a great centre of Indian forces. Two of these fortifications are on the banks of the Vermillion, in the south part of the township, on the farm owned by John Summers, while in different parts of the township are other and smaller ones. Who built them is not known. History gives us no knowledge on this subject, but we do know that the In- dians found here by the first white settlers were principally those that belonged to the Sandusky, Tawa, and Chippewa tribes.
The first settlement of Vermillion found a wide sand beach extending from the mouth of the river west the whole length of the township, from four to
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fifteen rods in width, and in some places heavily timbered with basswood and other trees. After the building of Black Rock dam for a feeder to the Erie Canal, in 1826, the lake arose two feet or more, and the beach began to dis- appear until now the wear upon the farms has become so great as to seriously alarm the owners, who see yearly several acres of their best land swallowed up by Lake Erie. When Horatio Perry built his brick house in 1821, he placed it "away out back in the lot," twenty miles from the road. In the year 1860 this house was washed into the lake. Before this, a stone house, owned by Captain Austin, shared a similar fate, notwithstanding the attempts to barricade against the action of the waves, which have been of little avail. The land upon which the first school-house was built, and upon which another house was also built, has been carried away, with the road and two rows of the orchard south of the road. Several other buildings have been moved to escape a similar fate, and the question still arises in the minds of the owners of land, how far will this waste proceed ? It has been suggested that a law be framed compelling those owning land on the lake front to fortify their fronts againt the action of the lake. Unless all unite in this work the result would be fruitless, as the water would demolish the fortifications by a flank move- ment.
The first record of a township meeting is in the hands of Judge Ruggles, and was held at his residence on the 6th day of April, 1818. Almon Ruggles was elected clerk; Peter Cuddeback and James Prentiss, judges of election ; Francis Keyes, John Beardsley and Rufus Judson, trustees ; Jeremiah Van Benschoter and Horatio Perry, overseers of the poor ; Peter Cuddeback and Francis Keyes, fence viewers; Peter Cuddeback, lister and appraiser, and Stephen Meeker, appraiser; Peter Cuddeback, treasurer; George Sherarts, Francis Keyes, William Van Benschoter and James Prentiss, supervisors.
Diseases of various kinds visited the new settlement, but the worst visita- tion took the form of bloody murrain, and ravaged the Firelands for many years. It affected neat stock only, and occasionally an animal would recover, but no remedies helped it. Some thought the animal drank blood-suckers from the brook, but the question was never satisfactorily settled. Year after year this disease swept off cattle, until men were sometimes obliged to sell a portion of their land to buy a yoke of oxen, or supply the places of the cows that had died. Those years were a continual record of disappointments and failures, but the men were plucky and had New England perseverance, and in the end were victorious. One man tells of buying a cow that had nine heifer calves, not one of which lived to grow up. Sheep were equally uncertain, and between dogs, wolves, and murrain, there seemed little or no hope of accumu- lating property. The wolves that troubled the settlers were the large grey variety, that can make night hideous by its howls. It is impossible to give an idea of the noise these creatures made at night, but in the old records we read of romances by burning logs, where these animals figured quite prominently.
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It cost more effort to I:ve a girl in those times than at the present, when a young man can spend the evening with his adored idol, and hie him home in safety without long stretches of woods to pass through, surrounded by howl- ing wolves. A story is told of Stephen Smith, a bachelor, rather under the ordinary size, who, in is:3, wished to go to Squire Barnum's, in Florence, from Judge Meeker's residence on the lake shore. The distance was five or six miles, and in order to be sure and be back early enough in the morning to go to work, he procured a Horse and started early in the evening. There was only a bridle path through the woods, which, in the darkness, he lost and soon found himself surrounded by a pack of wolves, barking furiously. His horse took fright and ran, and he took refuge in a tree, where he found a branch on which he seated himself, H:ding on to the trunk with his arms. The wolves surrounded the tree, snapging and growling and howling, until daylight came and gave him release. What was his chagrin, on attempting to stretch his legs downward, to find he had not ascended at all, but was sitting on a pro- jection near the ground.
A true bear story is to. of Vermillion, which is worth repeating as a sam- ple of pioneer life. It occurred in the spring of 1819 or 1820, where Deacon John Beardsley's boys were cutting small brush on the south side of the marsh. As the boys were going t: their work they heard a strange noise, and two of them refused to go on, b =: Clement, the youngest, insisted on searching out the cause of the noise and found an old bear and three cubs lying under a large tree or log. Some cze was sent for help, and as the two or three hunt- ers in the neighborhood were not at home, Mr. Washborn, from Connecticut, who had never hunted, with his son Wheeler, a lad of fourteen, and a large dog of his, together with some fifteen or twenty women and children, gathered for the conflict. Mr. Washborn, armed with an ax, stood ready to pitch in after the boy should shoo :. The dog joined in the fray, and was soon in the bear's huge arms. Finally a hunter came up with another dog, which was set on the track, and was also disabled. The old bear was never found. The cubs were all tamed.
Home life among these pioneers was primitive in the extreme. Conven- iences for cooking were sc scarce that at first they pounded corn, wet it to a batter, and baked it on = chip before the fire. Bear meat, raccoon, turkey and hog were cooked to match, and no suppers ever tasted better than these simple repasts, because those that partook of them were hungry children, hunters and workmen. Tzen there came the era of bake-ovens, with coals on top and coals beneath; and then the better oven or reflector, which enabled them to bake, roast or bro.": and this in time gave place to the brick oven that preceded the modern stove, and all these changes in sixty years. .
Dress in those early days was not the subject of as much thought as in these latter times. Men wore pants made of deer-skin and home-made flan-
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nels, with a coon-skin cap, and sometimes a fulled-cloth suit for dress occa- sions. When deer-skin pantaloons were cast aside to make way for those of cloth, a large patch of buckskin was still worn over the knee and seat. Prices were considered fabulous, when a man must pay $4.50 for common satinet for a pair of pants, for a coat $6.00, and common cotton shirts $2.00 each, and everything else in proportion. As most men had families to support they could not afford these luxuries, and instead of putting their money in dress, used it to clear their farms or erect buildings. Ladies (and that they were ladies who can doubt that has read their lives or known their descendants) wore common tow dresses for every day, and on grand occasions indulged in plaid flannels or calico. They found the secret of appearing prettily dressed, even in these materials; and by a ruffle and some simple ornament, won as much admiration as their children do in satins and laces. Children enjoyed life with fewer restrictions than the children of the present, for they had little or no clothing to interfere with their freedom. They were taught to be useful when young, and were happy because employed. Their mothers were brave and patient, enduring hardships and sufferings, such as we can scarcely im- agine. From early records we find that the taxes laid on the inhabitants of Verinillion in 1818 amounted to $23.20, and was borne by forty-five men, the largest tax paid by any one man being $1.70, by Stephen Meeker. Five cents represents one head of cattle and twenty cents a horse.
The first literary society was formed in the winter of 1820-21. It began in a debating school that was held in the deserted log-cabin on the shore, owned by Rufus Judson. There was a hickory bark fire, some old benches and one or two old chairs. The crowd consisted of Captain Josiah S. Pelton, president ; Charles P. Judson and Jonah Bartow, jr., on the affirmative, and Burton Parsons and Benjamin Summers, opposition. The question to be dis- cussed was, " Which are most useful to mankind, horses or cattle ?" The elo- quence and erudition that was displayed on this occason can be better im- agined than described, and after all other subjects had been discussed, from the fall of man to the millenium, it was decided that the cattle won the day.
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