History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio, Part 52

Author: Williams Brothers
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 443

USA > Ohio > Lake County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 52
USA > Ohio > Geauga County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 52

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west of the present residence, which he built later, he sunk some large troughs for vats, and opened the first tannery in the county, and probably on the Reserve. The chronicle of Burton carries me on to a pleasant incident in 1802, a great event in the life of young Brooks, an episode in the history of the township, the memory of which comes to us across the dead years with the flavor of young love. With Ephraim Clark and his wife came a son, Isaac, and three unmarried daughters. Whoever carries well-brought-up, sensible daughters into a frontier settlement is in a fair way to become popular and a grandfather of the people. Polly, the eldest, married Joseph Moss, and was afterwards the wife of Luther Russel. The younger, Hannah, was married to David Hill, first carpenter and joiner. Rachel, the second, seems to have early won the heart of Jonathan. Tall, comely, with large, beautiful eyes,* she was one to appreciate young Brooks. I would tell the story of their courtship if I knew it. They were married at Burton on the 30th of June, 1802, Judge Kirtland coming from Poland to solemnize the union of a rare and rarely-mated couple. This was the first wedding of Burton.

This same summer Vene Stone came, and, though he purchased land in New- bury, he also bought land in Burton and settled there. He boarded, until his marriage, with Joe Hayes, and lived in Burton until he built a framed house in Newbury many years later.

According to. Elijah Hayes, the first school of Burton was this summer, in a building down west, near the site of the cheese-factory, by a spring, and it was kept by Sally Miner, whose father was the first settler of Chester, and that a log school-house was built the next year on the road west, near the mill-brook, which was kept by Charity Hopson, sister of Samuel Hopson, a pioneer of Burton, and the first settler of Munson. A little later she became the first wife of Vene Stone. She it was who used to " switch off" the young Indians who interrupted the planting of the sciences in the woods. Charity became the mother of Emerit, Mrs. L. Patchin, and Mrs. Caroline Jones, and died early.

I have no record of 1803, save this mild contest of civilization and savagery, conducted by charity on one side and the juvenile reds on the other. That others came that season is probable. Burton was still feeble, lonely ; trails from remote places were opened from Middlefield, Chester, and Hambden to Beard's Mills. Trails reached to distant Mentor, north to Grand River, to Youngs- town, Poland, Warren, and Mantua ; but from the brow of Burton hill the lonely dwellers in the isolated cabins looked over an unbroken expanse of tree-tops, from which they could see the rising smoke of no settler's cabin. When they reached Burton, Ohio was the " northwest territory," and they were in the feeble outline county of Trumbull. In November, 1802, a convention in Chillicothe formed and adopted a wisely-drawn State constitution, adopted largely from that of Ten- nessee, which, though never submitted to the people, was accepted by Congress, and the blank, empty territory became in name a State in 1803. Her forests were still unbroken, her lake a waste, her great river a solitude. Tribes of In- dians held their old seats in her midst, and bloody battles were yet to be fought on her soil, and these Burton hills and valleys were yet to reverberate with the thunders of a great naval battle which should decide the empire of the west.

March 22, 1804, is marked in the annals of Burton by the arrival of Eleazar Hickox, a native of Connecticut, in youth an adventurer, who had spent a year in Poland, in the employ of Jonathan Fowler, 1803-4, had made a journey East, and now returned to the West to fill the Reserve with his enterprise, and make it familiar with his name; to largely develop and aid the infant settlement, fill high places, make and mar a fortune, and die in poverty and neglect. Born July 25, 1776, three weeks younger than the nation, he was now in his twenty-eighth year, dark, with striking features, well made, hardy, sagacious, quick, and ready, mod- est manners formed by much mixing with the world of that day, of great execu- tive ability, a man for a new country, and then unmarried, he planted himself in Burton. It always after held the place he called home-was it more than a name ?- and there is his grave.

He performed the journey up the lake, on the ice, with a horse and cutter; came near being lost through the ice. At Grand River he found General Edward Paine and two or three other families camped in small temporary huts. They came the fall before (1803), and were clearing and getting ready to settle. There were two houses at Painesville. In one, that of Mr. Smith, he stayed his first night. Twelve hours of hard work took him to Bondstown, where he stayed. In his enumeration of the inhabitants of Burton, on the day of his arrival, I find no names not mentioned in this sketch, except J. S. Cleveland. Of him he says that he came there in 1802, and built a small framed house near where he (Hickox) built a brick house, now the residence of W. J. Ford. Elijah Hayes says that Cleveland brought on a stock of goods, and that he was the first merchant; that later, on the first militia organization, he was elected captain of the company ; Jedediah Beard, lieutenant; and Lyman Benton, ensign.

. Mrs. E. V. Canfield, of Chardon, is a granddaughter, and inherits Rachel Clark's eyes.

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Mr. P. Hitchcock says that David Hill was the first carpenter, and came early ; that he built a framed house near the John Punderson residence, which was the first framed house in Burton. He lived there.

Ephraim Clark's barn seems to have been the first framed barn, which I think must have been built before 1804. He moved to Mesopotamia in 1807. Ama- riah Beard moved to Chester that summer, and Hickox fitted up this place, bought goods of Jonathan Fowler, of Poland, and John Irwin, of Pittsburg, and became the second merchant. His goods came from Poland on a six-ox sled. Among his customers the Indians figure largely.

Elijah Hayes says the old academy was built in 1804, while Hickox puts it the year later. President Cutter, of the Western Reserve college, sustains Hayes,* although no school could have been opened in it as soon as he states, 1805. This year, also, Burton was visited by the tornado which devastated the forests of Chester and the intervening land, and killed John Miner. As it is mentioned only by Hayes, it was probably not so severe at Burton.

I find no account of the building of the first bridge across the Cuyahoga, as the east and principal branch was called, but in December, 1804, the east end of it, " a whole section," was carried out. This endangered the whole structure. The water was high, the weather intensely cold, and a great effort must be made. The settlers were convened, the thick ice broken up, and the work on the new section commenced. While at work Umberfield's only axe slipped from the ice and went to the bottom of fifteen feet of black wintry water. There was no prophet to cause it to rise and float. It was his only axe, worth five dollars, and could not be replaced. He offered a large reward for its recovery. Lyman Parks would undertake to do it. Umberfield had not the cash, and Hickox became responsible. Parks put down a strong pole, which two men held, when he stripped, went down into the ice-cold flood, which then ran with a swift current, recovered the axe, returned, dressed, and received the sum of twenty-five cents for the peril and exposure. So much was money then worth, and so much would the men of that day risk for small a sum. Enlivened by this characteristic episode, the work was resumed, and in time completed. Parks was the after- wards-famous counterfeiter.

The old academy must find mention. It was due to the efforts of the original proprietors of the township and some of the settlers. It was a building twenty- five by fifty feet, two stories high. It had two rooms twenty by twenty-five feet, and a hall ten by twenty-five feet through the middle below. One room was for a school, and the other for public worship and other purposes. Mr. Hickox had obviously forgotten the origin and scope of this proposed institution. It was the principal object of the care of the " Erie Literary Society," incorporated in April, 1803, by the first State legislature. The preamble sets forth, among other things, that a number of land proprietors, in the county of Trumbull, are desirous to appropriate a part to the support of a seminary of learning within said county, to effect which a charter was granted. The first corporator men- tioned was David Hudson, and the last Rev. Joseph Badger. Trumbull then was the Reserve. The society received donations of lands, the avails of which, with private donations, were employed in the erection of the academy. Mr. Law donated eleven hundred and thirty acres of land, to revert if the college should be removed from Burton. This was reconveyed in 1841. The building was not finished within two or three years, and was destroyed by fire in 1810. The attempt was probably in advance of the public wants, and was not rebuilt until 1817. We may as well follow its history now.

The charter contemplates an academy or college with a faculty, library, and apparatus, with university powers to confer degrees, and the new building was so far completed that, in May, 1820, a school was opened under David L. Coe, a graduate of Williams, and continued under the charter till 1834. Among the first teachers in the first building was Judge Peter Hitchcock, and I think that in later years it was under the charge of his son Reuben.

In 1817 the Grand River presbytery set on foot an organized attempt for the education of indigent young men for the ministry, and these were placed in the academy after its commencement in 1820.

In 1818 the Portage presbytery was formed, which organized a similar effort. These two presbyteries united in 1822 for the establishment of a theological institute on the Reserve. The joint body, after a season of prayer, concluded to rest the proposed school on the foundation of the Erie literary society, located at Burton, and offered certain propositions, which were accepted, and the union went on with such harmony as God permitted till June 3, 1824. In 1823 the theo- logical managers became satisfied that an institution such as they desired could not be built up on the banks of the upper Cuyahoga, and agitated for a removal from Burton. The trustces of the Erie literary society refused. The ground urged was that Burton was an unhealthy location. Much feeling was engendered.

It would be called ill had it been produced by any but a praying body of rever- ends. The theologians dissolved the connection, withdrew, and decided to set up for themselves and plant their institution at Hudson. Subscriptions were raised and a charter finally secured.t

Much of this lies in a broader field than even a history of the county. As it bears directly on the township of Burton, I have given this rapid sketch. The building up of the new college at Hudson was doubtless the main cause of the final decline of the academy at Burton. After the disruption it became in popu- lar name what it had really been,-the Burton Academy. For many years it flourished, a vigorous, popular, and useful career. It finally declined, was dis- continued. The old building, used for various purposes, grew shabby, until some wretch, fired with malice, or inspired by wanton mischief, burned it in 1840.

To resume the annals of 1805. John Ford visited Burton twice before his final removal there. I think he came first in 1804. He was a carpenter, and accompanied by Asa Wilmot, another. They stayed and worked some time. Hayes says he was the master-builder of the old academy, and raised the frame on his first visit, which would be in 1804. I am inclined to follow Hickox in this, who says that John Ford raised and covered his store on the first visit, and the academy on the second, in 1805, when he returned to his native Cheshire. He purchased one thousand acres of land north of the square, and made some improvement. Cotgrave, the swindler, and afterward cowardly colonel of the war, visited Burton that year. Probably Hall & Bradly, the hatters, also came the same year. Hall became foolish for want of success, and hanged himself not long after. Judge Parkman settled in the township of that name this year, I think, and during the summer all the Burton men spent two successive days in helping them to raise their first buildings, returning home the first night. The great event of the year 1806 was the arrival of Peter Hitchcock and John Cook, with their young wives and little children. They came by way of Pittsburg, Poland, and Youngstown, with a single wagon, drawn by a yoke of oxen and one horse. There were originally two horses; one gave out by the way,-a hard, slow, toilsome jour- ney. At the foot of Parkman hill the team gave out, and, as the legend is, the two women, one with an infant, were sent forward with the horse on the Burton trail to finish their journey alone and send help to their husbands. Slowly up the blind trail the poor, worn women, carrying the infant, riding and leading the horse, made their lonely way through the unnamed forests of Troy to the marsh- bordered, black Cuyahoga. In crossing the bridge the horse caught his foot between two logs, and the poor things had to get a lever and pry up one of the logs. They then toiled on and up the steep hill, Burton, their hope and rest. They had been told that it was new and rude. Spite of all, they had fancied plea- sant pictures of neat cabins under the trees, of happy, pleasant homes, though coarse and homely. When they finally gained the square, nothing met their eyes but the melancholy girdled trees, piled logs, and decaying brush. Wherever their expectant eyes fell, nothing but silent desolation met them. This was happy, pleasant Burton, their rest and home. It was too much. They had con- siderately relieved the worn horse of his burden and walked up the hill, so each had walked half the entire way. Overcome, they sank on the fallen trunk of a tree and broke into despairing lamentation. Bravely and uncomplainingly all the way, they had volunteered to make the last stage alone, to break utterly down at this final moment. They, too, were from Cheshire. Their cries and forlorn attitude attracted the attention of stalwart John Ford, their friend and towns- man, as he was at work on the academy with Asa Wilmot. Two lone women coming out of the depths of the near woods ! Wonderingly he hastened to them with strong arms and brave words of cheer. Poor, precious things ! they were soon in a sheltered home, ministered to and cared for by sweet Rachel Brooks I well think. Fresh oxen, with provisions and men, were soon on their way to the waiting husbands in the woods. That baby was Nabby Cook, eldest child of John Cook, and died the October following.

Peter Hitchcock,-one wonders what manner of man he was : middle height, stoutish, with a big head, full of bruins, and strongly-marked brow,-what had tempted him, a man of culture, into the wilds ? We know he had a call to be the ablest and most useful of the chief-justices. Had he any premonition of that ? Had his fainting wife ? What could he have thought of while awaiting succor in the Parkman woods? Doubtless of the vulgar things nearest him, as great men must-of the failure of the oxen, at this last day of weariness, and food; of the ones dependent on him, and little of any possible future. John Cook bought and built just north of the square, on the west side, and Hitchcock purchased where his son now resides. They began a pioneer's war with the savagery of nature about them. John Cook established his tannery in 1807, when he was joined by his brother Hiram, who came later.

I turn to Hayes. He says that in the school-house down west two winter

" History of Western Reserve College, p. 8.

t President Cutler's History Western Reserve College.

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HISTORY OF GEAUGA AND LAKE COUNTIES, OHIO.

terms of school were taught,-one by Joseph Noyes, and the other by Gideon Finch ; the first mention of either of them. Finch, I am told, built and opened the first tavern, afterwards the Beals tavern, although Umberfield was keeping travelers down by the spring, as we know by Blakeslee's cat-story. I infer this was before the arrival of Mr. Hitchcock, who kept a school in 1806 or 1807, as I understand, in the Hayes neighborhood, and soon after in the academy, and, like the rest, had to meet their common wants and overcome them in the same way. Eleazar Patchin and his family came in 1807, and settled on the Tomlinson farm; afterwards he moved to Newbury.

In 1807 back came stout John Ford* with his family and goods on two strong wagons. A well-to-do man was he, and his domain lay on the east side of the north road, and he built down near Deacon Cook's. With him came his wife, Stephen, John A., and the infant governor of Ohio, who was to toil and grub with common boys, working out the destiny of Burton, and with his relative, Hitchcock, get ready to control the destiny of the State. Colonel H. H. Ford was born later.

Marimon Cook-known as Deacon. Cook, father of John, Hiram, and other Cooks, and uncle of Brooks, to whom he taught the arts of tanning and shoe- making-and his family came on with John Ford. He and his son Hiram were the first skilled shoemakers who worked at the business. He bought and settled quite opposite his nephew's, with Hitchcock north and John Ford south of him.

Also Thaddeus Bradly, a native of Cheshire, and a Revolutionary soldier, though now from Vermont, came and settled north of Hitchcock, on the west side of the road, and so Cheshire street came to be settled early. His wife and the then wife of Deacon Cook were sisters.

Uri Hickox came in 1805. With Uri came, as hired-man, David Dayton. Uri with Dayton were employed to chop down the girdled trees on the square and clear the ground. When that was done, it was seen that it was not on the height of ground where, us' Eleazar Hickox says, " we gave a strip twenty rods wide and thirty long, added to the north side." Hickox himself had purchased some eight hundred acres of land. That winter came also a family of Hills, who lived in bis house, of whom nothing else is said except that Eleazar and Uri moved to the barn to make room for them. With these accessions came the more established social forms of life. Schools had been established. Rev. Joseph Badger came and preached. Regular worship was holden in the academy, where Hitch- cock or Hickox read a sermon, Deacon Cook spoke in prayer, and Jonathan Brooks organized a choir of singers. He was a famous vocalist and a successful teacher of psalmody, of which Linus gives a pleasant account.

CIVIL ORGANIZATION AND CHANGES.

The year 1806 suw the organization of the county of Geauga. The first re- corded order of the commissioners, sitting at New Market (between Painesville and Fairport) March 6, 1806, created the civil township of Burton. Originally there were districts; one of these, called Middlefield, in which there seems to have been an election in 1802. This order directs " that so much of the original dis- trict of Middlefield as lies within the county of Geauga, be and the same is hereby erected into a township or district by the name of Burton, and that the first township election shall be holden at the academy, in Burton, on the first Monday of April next." This, I think, embraced the twelve southern townships. Chester was detached in 1816; Canton and MeDonough (Claridon and Munson), by the name of Burlington, in 1817 ; Middlefield, with Huntsburg, were made a township at the same time; Newbury was also set off that year; as were Kentstown (Bain- bridge) and Troy (Auburn), with the name of Bainbridge; also Parkman, and Troy by the name of Welshfield, in 1820.

THE FIRST ELECTION.

The following officers of Burton township were elected April, A.D. 1806: Town Clerk, Samuel Hopson ; Trustees, Justus Miner, George Wallace, Joseph Clark ; Fence-Viewers, Seth Hayes, Noah Page; Overseers of the Poor, Isauc Thompson, Jonathan Brooks; Appraiser, David Hill; Lister, David Barrett; Constable, Uri Hickox ; five supervisors of highways.

As antitheses, I give the list of the officers elected April 1, A.D. 1878: Town Clerk, H. C. Tuttle ; Treasurer, R. N. Ford ; Trustees, Andrew Fenn, Thomas

Brown, Michael Kinney ; Assessor, Lester Crittenden ; Constables, S. M. Dayton, L. C. Turner; Justices of the Peace, Geo. W. Jacques, Chas. J. Scott; and fifteen supervisors of highways.

Benjamin Johnson seems to have been the first, and Joseph Clark the second justice of the peace. Johnson was a Revolutionary soldier, and came in 1806. I can give no account of Clark, nor of any of the trials before these magistrates. Hickox was commissioned the third, in September of this year. Samuel Burton, Lyman Benton, Noah Page, Luther Russell, Samuel Norris, Simeon Rose, Andrew and Lyman Durand, came in 1806. Lyman was a fiddler, a valuable acquisition. Burton was gay in the old time, and tales are told of the dancing of Peter Hitchcock, Sr., and John Cook.

In 1807, Gilbert J. Ferris, the first grower of fruit-trees, came up from Poland, bought a four-acre lot on the northeast of the square, where he seems to have lived and set out a fruit garden. He also purchased ten acres on the road east, on a part of which he planted his young trees brought from Poland. He seems to have been a cultivated man, and succeeded Hitchcock as a teacher in the then new academy. From his son, E. J. Ferris, I give these as residents of Burton in 1807 : At the southwest corner of the square, Lyman Durand. On the road west, Samuel Hopson, Lyman Benton, Nathan Parks, and Jedediah Beard. On the road north, John Cook, Jonathan Brooks, Mariman Cook, John Ford, Peter Hitchcock, Thaddeus Bradley, and Calvin Williams, not before named. East, Gilbert J. Ferris, Matthew Fleming, first here mentioned, Noah Page, Luther Russell, and Andrew Durand. South, Joseph Noyes, whom Ferris calls a lawyer, A. Bradley, David Hill, Gideon Finch, and Simeon Rose. In the southeast part, Benjamin Johnson and Eli Fowler. In the southwest, Seth Eli and Jo. Hayes, Isaac Fowler, Vene Stone, and Amariah Beard. Down Oak Hill way, Freeman Hyde, the first blacksmith. He came earlier, was a good smith, a better lover of whisky, and it came finally to cost a pint over and above other charges to get a horse shod. Here are some new names : Eli Fowler has been mentioned. He was axe-man for the surveyors in 1798; was a famous hunter and trapper of wolves ; married Martha Sperrey, and died in 1865. Calvin Williams became a man of substance and influence.

In 1808, Lemuel Punderson, an apprentice of the Fords, in Cheshire, and who had been three or four years on the Reserve, and E. Hickox formed a partnership, and cut a road west from Beard's mills to the town line, thence south to the foot of Punderson's pond, where they commenced and erected a mill; and still acces- sions continued to be made, roads were opened, framed barns and then houses were erected. Stumps began to decay and fruit-trees to bear. John Cook had established an extensive tannery, and Hickox & Punderson extended their stocks of goods. Cattle were purchased and driven away. Lyman Parks took a small drove to the new sult works in New York, and Hickox had been in open boats to Detroit as early as 1807, for cider, from the old French orchards. Jon- athan Brooks also made a voyage to the same place, for provisions, a little later.

In the winter of 1809-10, the old academy was burned, during a term taught by Gilbert J. Ferris. It was supposed to be the work of an incendiary, made much excitement, and was a serious loss. Mr. Ferris continued the school in his own house. I can hardly give the names of the arrivals of 1810, 1811, or 1812. Among them were the Bealses, who went on to Welshfield and came back. With the last year came the war, and in August the disaster of Hull's surrender. Nothing seemed to interpose between the helpless settlers of northern Obio and the tomahawk of the Indians. Wild rumors came on the wings of the western winds that they were on their way down the lake, murdering and burning. from Sandusky to Huron,-were at Cleveland, so the rumor ran. General Edward Paine was then brigadier-general of the militia, and Jedediah Beard, a man of great energy, colonel of the regiment, including the men of Burton. On receiv- ing orders, General Paine dashed through the woods, doing duty as staff-officer, and reached Beard's in the night, losing his hat in the brush and darkness, and issued his orders in person. Eleazar Hickox was major, and acted with usual prompitude; shoes were made and cartridge-boxes extemporized. The order was flashed through the woods, and the hardy, sun-browned hunters and pioneers re- sponded. Meantime, to be certain of the look of things, Major Hickox plunged through the woods to Cleveland, and returned to hurry on the force. Such expe- dition was used, that they were the first on the ground. The appearance of Col- onel Beard's men, discipline, and camp were greatly commended at Cleveland. The following are the officers from Burton : Colonel. Jedediah Beard, Major Eleazar Hickox, Adjutant Peter Hitchcock,f Quartermaster Eleazar Patchin. Company officers: Vene Stone, captain ; Eli Fowler, lieutenant; Simeon Moss, en- sigu (second lieutenant). Hickox says that a certain number only were wanted, but the whole command volunteered. Of these, Simeon Moss, John Chartte, Samuel Burton, Adolphus Carlton, Jacob Burton, Isaac Thompson, Ebeneser Hayes, Seth Hayes, Joseph Johnson, Gomer Bradley, Selah Bradley, Burt

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History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio, Part 52

Author: Williams Brothers Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Number of Pages: 443

Author: Williams Brothers
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 443