USA > Ohio > Lake County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 34
USA > Ohio > Geauga County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 34
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I have been familiar with this long, useful, and unselfish life, the example and lesson of which should be preserved, and I turn to the three or four pages of data, a dry outline without breadth or color, as if the hand that furnished did so grudg- ingly, and feel that my labor must be less fruitful than I could wish. Especially
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I would have known more of the subjects, measures, and bills brought to the attention of the legislative bodies of which Mr. Taylor was a conspicuous member, and the condition and needs of the time.
The Taylors must have been of a good, vigorous race in their Connecticut antecedents, of which I have not a word. Horace, the elder brother, was a public-spirited man, and built an academy at the centre of Claridon, and on a less extended field lived a life of practical usefulness like his brother.
The family, by New England thrift, was well-to-do. This, to the newer gen- eration of the Western Reserve, furnishes the idea of rich lands, abundant har- vests, fat cattle, and easy lives, but which, in fact, was a steady, unrelenting struggle, almost a war, with a hard, sterile soil, a rigorous climate, and unkindly surroundings, for what, to the easy-going, well-off farmer of Geauga, was a meagre, thankless return, compelling a study and practice of all the small econo- mies in order to make the least advance in acquisition, and the slow, almost im- perceptible gains of even the most successful New England farming family.
HON. LESTER TAYLOR.
Of such Mr. Taylor was a son. He received a good common-school educa- tion. His parents were never able to send him to an academy, that hope and ambition of the aspiring youth of his day.
The common school of that time was a totally different institution from the schools of to-day. A course in the Chardon high school of to-day is a better and much more useful course than Yale or Harvard furnished at the day of his birth. He began with Dilworth's arithmetic and ended with Daboll; a small abridg- ment of Murray's grammar came in late. In geography, a book of questions and answers-a map, not to speak of an atlas-was then unheard of in a country school, and yet with those meagre, scanty helps were formed the intelligent, sinewy, fibrous minds of that time, which did not grow up indolent in the fatness and abundance of easy means of learning, but were hungry, craving, and unsatisfied. He never attended a summer school after he was ten. At eighteen he taught school, as did Garfield and Ludlow, though such cases were rare.
Hartland, the town of his nativity, had an abundance of good air and fine scenery, was rough, hilly, rocky, and had plenty of good water. It was not a bad place to raise children. The hardy and enterprising usually left it as soon after reaching years of discretion as parents permitted. One would hardly remain there later.
Lester went at twenty and joined Horace in the still abundant woods of Clari- don. Notwithstanding his hardy rearing, young Taylor had reached early man- hood with a slender constitution and slight strength, compared with most of the robust pioneers. He went on to the farm where he now lives, then beautiful forest slopes, and struck the first of the incessant blows which changed it with time to the beautiful present. When he left Hartland he left his troth with sweet Mary Wilder, and it was to make a home for her that he journeyed and toiled three years, cleared the home fields, built his cabin, and set rose-trees about it, and in 1821 he visited Connecticut, married, and carried her to the new Claridon resi- dence.
From the first he taught school in the winters. In 1819 he " kept" a four- months school in Mentor, and the surviving pupils gave him a famous reunion a few years since. The year of his marriage Claridon celebrated the 4th. Mr.
Taylor was the "young Demosthenes," and a blunderbuss of good Queen Ann's time, a " queen's-arm," was the artillery of the occasion.
In 1824 the log cabin, the homestead, was consumed by fire, with quite all its contents-a calamity for any time, a great one then and to them.
Mr. Taylor early organized a literary club and debating society, and Claridon has seldom been without one since. He had decided to be a farmer, and an intel- ligent one-not merely to plant and grub, but understand, study, sympathize with all the processes involved, and be enabled to conduct farming with intelligence and profit, and derive from it something of the higher pleasures of science and observa- tion as well as that of gain. He became a subscriber to the New England Farmer, and extended his patronage to other agricultural journals as they sprang up. He began also to buy and collect books as occasion and means permitted, which in time became quite as extensive a library as any to be found in the county. He early turned his own and the attention of his neighbors and friends to the uses and beauties of tree-planting and culture about the houses, lawus, yards, highways, and public places ; is to be regarded as the pioneer in this, and was quite the first to discover and make available for this purpose the rare qualities of our native trees, the elm and maple. His own beautiful farm, and Claridon generally, bear ample evidence to his fidelity to an early matured taste for arboriculture.
His early devotion to the cause of a thorough common-school education was marked and practical, wisely judging that in this field was the mission of the American educator. At an early day it was the duty of the courts to appoint examiners of teachers, and Mr. Taylor was one of the earliest, with William L. Perkins and others, in the county. At an early day his then fine, erect, soldierly person attracted the attention of Colonel C. C. Paine,-all that family were colo- nels and generals,-and he appointed him adjutant of his regiment. Such was his popularity that the commissioned officers of the regiment, with whom it lay, not long after elected him to command them, and the title of colonel, thus acquired, only yielded to that of judge afterwards.
As is generally known, the Western Reserve had received for school purposes a large grant of government lands situate in Tuscarawas and adjoining counties, all in the State. It became necessary to utilize the proceeds of them, as well as to open them to settlers and permit the country to be improved; and in 1830 an act was passed for this purpose, which required that they should be appraised. Mr. Taylor was appointed to this responsible duty, in company with Amos Seward, of Portage, and Ahaz Merchant, of Cleveland. These lands, aggrega- ting sixty thousand acres, were not to be sold for less than the appraised value, although, if not sold within the time specified, were to be offered at public sale. The proceeds were the foundation of the common-school fund for the Western Reserve. That Mr. Taylor executed this duty with fidelity needs no assurance. When completed, he was detailed by the board to report the result at the capital.
Mr. Taylor was elected to represent Geauga County in the general assembly of Ohio, and re-elected,-the first for the session of 1832-33, and the second for 1834-35. I think these elections were by the anti-Masons, who then embodied much of the active intelligence of the county, and the last time he and Seabury Ford were probably rival candidates. However it was, the people of Geauga have always had a serious purpose in the elections of representatives.
None of the second generation of men remember the State politics of those years. We know there were threats of awful war by Governor Mason, the terri- torial governor of Michigan, about a strip of land, on which stood the then small town of Toledo. The people of that region, in May, 1835, assembled in conven- tion and formed a State constitution, with a boundary so liberal as to include Maumee bay, the mouth of the river, Toledo, and a wide strip of Ohio; and Gov- ernor Mason, then quite twenty-one years of age, assembled bis forces, with a proclamation, at Monroe, which some people in Ohio then supposed to be a stout- headed, malicious old man, instead of a town, who was setting the young cockerel up to this mischief, and who marched toward Toledo with bloody intent. Good old Robert Lucas, Democratic governor of Ohio, convened the Ohio legislature by proclamation as stout as that of the governor of all Michigan, and Colonel Taylor was of those who responded. Governor Lucas called for volunteers finally, and some of us boys offered to go, but were never mustered. It made a national commotion, however, and John Quincy Adams, who had a capacity for being wrong-headed, stood with " that old Monroe," egging on Governor Mason. Congress finally offered to admit Michigan if she would relinquish her claim to Ohio, and take the upper peninsula instead, a wide wild region north of Mack- inaw, between Lakes Superior and Michigan. She refused in 1836, and accepted in 1837. Colonel Taylor, who had a hand in holding Ohio quiet during this excitement, could have told us all about his part of it.
Time elapsed, and in 1846 he was elected one of the associate judges of Geauga County, with Judge Aiken and Judge Converse, which made a very respectable court of itself. Judge Taylor had in his younger days often appeared in the magistrates' courts and before arbitrators, had presided as justice of the peace for
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many years, had read some of the elementary books, and, with his quick accurate apprehension of things and the respect entertained for him and his associates by the bar, he made a very good presiding judge. Under the old constitution, many powers and duties more municipal than judicial devolved on the associate judges. This place he filled until the change of the judiciary under the new State consti- tution in 1851.
In politics Mr. Taylor was a Whig of the Giddings and Frank Wade school, which, with a few notable exceptions, was the Geauga type. With the most of these he became a Free-Soiler in 1848. In 1854 he was elected by them again to the House, where, with the memory of his former service, he at once took a high position.
In 1856 he was elected to the Senate by the counties of Ashtabula, Geauga, and Lake. These were the years of Tom Ford as lieutenant-governor, who was never in the chair, the only real service he could render; and it was one of those " nevers" that was much better than late or even early. Judge Taylor was elected president pro tem., and presided at the opening ceremonies of taking pos- session of the Senate chamber in the famous new State capitol, and generally during his .senatorial term was regarded as one of the best presiding officers of that body. During these years Judge Taylor was justly regarded throughout the State as one of its most able and faithful legislators.
Reared with a profound respect for New England orthodoxy, Judge Taylor gave his enlightened assent to the general soundness of its faith more than fifty years ago. He carries his warm vitality, and is carried by it, into all things which he deems worthy his concern. He would necessarily be of the new-school wing, and could not fail of being one of its representative men ; was of the Lake and Geauga church conferences for twenty years, and chosen by conference to represent it in the first national council of the Congregational churches at Boston, in 1865. Also in the national council at Detroit, in 1857.
Judge Taylor was largely instrumental in the formation of the Geauga Historical Society, in 1875. Upon its organization he became its president, and has con- tinued at its head to the present time. He has devoted much time to traveling about and holding pioneer meetings in the various townships, delivering addresses, looking up the surviving settlers, stimulating the interest of all classes in the gen- eral subject, gathering material, and securing the selection in each of the town- ships of a competent person to write its history, and has urged them to such diligence that the society has felt itself authorized to canvass for a cheap edition of its undoubtedly valuable collections. He has taken a lively interest in our work, contributed whatever was in his reach, and deplores the action of his as- sociation, which precluded our use of its gatherings .*
Judge Taylor was one of the most active promoters of the organization of the Claridon Farmers' Club, instituted some twenty years ago, which has had his steady and warm support to the present time. At the recent August reunion and fes- tival of the Claridon, Chardon, and Hambden clubs, at the centre of Claridon, he delivered a valuable extemporaneous address, full of practical wisdom, the fruit of long experience and wide and varied observation, reading, and reflection.
Prominent in all the social and so-called domestic associations of his region, Judge Taylor, a few years since, organized what is known as the " Central Park Association," the objects of which are to ornament the public grounds of the township, create a taste for, and lead to, general arboriculture, and the laying out and planting of lawns, yards, and grounds of private residences.
Judge Taylor early became a practical speaker, with an easy flow of language and good manner, a thing so useful, and to most Americans born so easy of ac- quisition, that one wonders why so few intelligent and leading minds acquire the power. Mr. Taylor's mind is of a logical order. He has the capacity, full capacity, of seeing and hearing, which so many lack, and thus draws information from what goes on about him, which he works into thought and ideas. He is with- out imagination, has little fancy, and perhaps less humor, save of a grim sort. The mind is sound, practical. Kindly, a just and liberal man, pure of spirit, and blameless of life, not greatly seeking, giving more than he receives.
His Mary Wilder fell by the wayside many years ago, after a true woman's unselfish life. True heart, her husband sought no other love. Sons and daugh. ters she left. One devotes her maiden life to him. A son, in a tasteful home, is just across the way.
His homestead, one of the pleasantest situated in that region, has a fine outlook down a gentle slope, westerly, into the sweet vale of " Aquilla lake" and the western Cuyahoga. Here, with faculties unimpaired, in the serene mellowness of ripe years, with the softened rays of the " westering sun" gilding his years, they will run their serene and still luminous course.
* All of them seem to deplore, and the strange thing is that all together seem unequal to getting out of, their own unfortunate action.
HON. ROBERT BRECK PARKMAN.
Robert Breck Parkman was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, May 21, 1771. His father, Alexander Parkman, was a native of Westboro', Massachusetts, and was a soldier in the war of the Revolution.
Soon after its close he removed with his family from Leicester to Westmoreland, in Oneida county, N. Y., being one of the pioneer settlers of the town. His son, Robert, who was the oldest of the family, which in the lapse of time became patriarchal in numbers, was his father's chief assistant in the labors of the new settlement.
HON. ROBERT BRECK PARKMAN.
In 1792, soon after attaining his majority, he went to Cayuga county and began the study of the law, at the same time teaching school in order to defray his ex- penses. He also while studying engaged in dealing in real estate, and was so far successful that he became the owner of considerable land in and about Cayuga. By too close application to study and business his health failed, and he returned to his father's house, in Oneida county, where he remained two years. During this time, in 1797, he made his first visit to Ohio. This journey, which was made on horseback, was undertaken in part on account of his health, and partly to ex- plore a tract of land which his uncle, Samuel Parkman, of Boston, had before this purchased, and which now constitutes the township of Parkman.
On his return to Cayuga he engaged very actively in forwarding the building of the first bridge across Cayuga lake, giving to the enterprise both time and money. This bridge was completed in 1799.
Early in 1800, Mr. Parkman was admitted to the bar, and began at once the successful practice of the law. In 1803 he again visited Parkman, at this time for the purpose of making a survey of the township, and also to become acquainted with its capabilities with a view to future settlement. At the same time he passed an examination before the Supreme Court, and was admitted to practice law in the State of Ohio. Just before his return to Cayuga, May 29, 1803, he was married at the house of Judge John Walworth, at Grand River, now Paines- ville, to Miss Lucy Phelps, second daughter of Judge Seth Phelps, of Aurora, New York. The bridal journey of several hundred miles was made on horse. back.
Early in June, 1804, he left Cayuga with his wife and infant son for a per- manent settlement in Ohio, and arrived at Grand River on the 17th of that month. Leaving Mrs. Parkman and child at the house of Judge Walworth, he at once proceeded to Parkman, the scene of his future labors. While laying the foundation for the practice of his profession, he acted as the agent of his uncle in forwarding the settlement of the township, having, in short, the whole manage- ment of the business. The letters of the elder Parkman at this time show great deference to his opinion and confidence in his judgment and integrity, which continued unabated through the many years of their close association in business.
Mr. Parkman was accompanied by his brother-in-law, Alfred Phelps, then a lad of eleven years, who was his companion in his first encampment in the forest. They found on their arrival that the commission appointed by the legislature to run the State road through Trumbull county was on the ground, and Mr. Park- man's first care was, if possible, to secure its passage through that part of the town which the water-power indicated as the future centre of business. In this he failed, and his next object was to erect a shelter for his family. Having chosen a spot near the river, and cleared it sufficiently by the help of a few settlers in adjoining townships, his cabin was made habitable, and in five weeks after his first arrival he saw his family installed in their new abode.
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This cabin was without floor, doors, or glazed windows, and a large stump in the centre was used as a table. As soon as possible a saw-mill was built near this point, to which Mr. Parkman gave his personal attention, and soon saw it so far completed as to be in operation, when he at once took measures to provide a more suitable habitation for his family. This log house of three rooms, with floors, doors, and windows, stood on what is now the west side of the public square, and was completed and occupied before November.
At this time he was joined by his brother-in-law, Samuel Ledyard, and his wife, who was a sister of Mrs. Parkman, and the united families spent their first winter in the wilderness, with no neighbors nearer than Burton W. Nelson. Fortunately they had with them a small library of well-chosen books, which served to beguile their leisure hours; and as they were all persons of education and refinement, they were not without resources within themselves. . Warren, sixteen miles distant, was their nearest post-office, but, for want of roads, could only be reached on horseback, and communication with the outer world was held only at long intervals. Captain Edward Paine, then living at. Painesville, who was also a brother-in-law of Mr. Parkman, writes to him about this time, " You say you have no. news to com- municate. I think it must be on account of your retired situation."
In 1805 a post-office was established, of which. Mr. Parkman was made post- master, which office he continued to hold till the accession of Jackson to the pres- idency, in 1829, when, under the rule of political .proscription for opinion's sake, it passed into other hands. .. In this month (August, 1805) Mr. Parkman's eldest daughter, Adaline, afterwards the wife of Julian C. Huntington, of Painesville, was born. Her birth is memorable as being that of the first white child born in the township. She grew ... up into a woman of uncommon beauty, but died in 1834, of consumption, before she had completed her thirtieth year.
No time was lost in pushing forward improvements. In this year a road lead- ing from the point of Mr. Parkman's settlement on the river northeast to the State road was opened.
In 1806 a mill for. grinding grain was built, surveys of land were made, and farms laid out, to all of which he gave his personal superintendence. As settlers came into the town his doors were always opened to them, and his house became their home till such time as they could provide one. for themselves. He was their counselor in trouble, their physician in sickness, their guide and faithful friend always; and many a discouraged and homesick settler, by his timely aid and words of encouragement, had reason in after-years to bless the memory of the man whose influence saved them from loss, and in the end secured for them comfort and independence.
At this time, and till 1824, at which time occurred the death of Samuel Park- man, he had the whole care of his land on the Reserve, comprising some forty thousand acres, located in Geauga, Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Portage, Lorain, and Medina counties, as well as that of other persons in Boston ; and so faithfully did he execute his trust that during the twenty years of his service no word of dis- satisfaction of his management was expressed. During these years also his law- practice was increasing; his business extended to all the counties of the Reserve in which courts were established.
In 1807, Mr. Parkman conceived the project of building a road between the Cuyahoga and the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum, as well as the clearing of those rivers of the fallen timber, in order to establish direct communication be- tween Lake Erie and the Ohio river, with Cleveland and Marietta as termini. For the purpose of raising funds for this project, as well as to enlist capitalists in the undertaking, he visited Albany and New York in 1808. It does not appear that he was successful.
Meanwhile, his family was increasing. Early in 1807, his second son, Henry Seymour, was born, who was the first white male child born in Parkman, a sketch of whom is given in the body of its history. In this year, Mr. Parkman built another large log house in the northern part of the village, in which himself and family lived till 1818, and in which his children, Edwin, born in 1808, and died of consumption after a long illness in 1828, Lucy Maria, 1810, John Walworth, 1812, and Robert Breck, 1815, were born. Here, also, in 1813, John Wal- worth died in infancy -- an event memorable as being the first death which had occurred in Parkman since its first settlement, nine years previous. There was then no lot set apart for a cemetery, and the child was buried in a quiet spot not far from the dwelling, where, not long after, was added the grave of a younger child unnamed. At the time of the death of these children, Mr. Parkman was dangerously ill with a disease known at that time as " the epidemic."
During these years he was " in labors abundant." Occupied as he was with the cares of his family, which included every settler, all of whom looked up to him as to a father, and with his extensive and varied business, he was the con- stant recipient of letters from those who had relatives somewhere in Ohio, or absent debtors of whom they wished information, or other cases. These were all attended to as far as possible, and the correspondence entailed would fill volumes.
In 1818 he removed to a house in what is now the village, built not long be- fore by Charles C. Paine, and which was the first frame dwelling in Parkman. It is still standing, and in good preservation. While living here, in 1819, he was appointed associate judge, but held the office but a short time, as the per- formance of its duties was quite impossible in the midst of his other engage- ments. In the latter part of 1821 he removed to a house in the western part of the public square, which was long known as " the Parkman house," in which he resided the remainder of his life.
In 1820, Mrs. Parkman died, after a long and distressing illness, of consumption. She was, as before stated, the daughter of Judge Seth Phelps, of Aurora, New York, in which place she was born, October 7, 1783, and where the greater part of her early life was passed amid the comparative refinement of the society of that State, and in the enjoyments of the best educational advantages which her native place afforded Her first visit to Ohio was made in 1799, at which time she was the guest of her relative, Judge John Walworth, of Grand River, at whose house she remained till her marriage, in 1803. She accompanied her hus- band at the time of his first settlement in Parkman, and was the first white woman ever in the town. A true wife for a pioneer, she cheerfully bore her part of the burdens, and shared the discomforts of those primitive times.
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