History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio, Part 56

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

USA > Ohio > Lake County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 56
USA > Ohio > Geauga County > History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio > Part 56

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).

THE GRAY FAMILY.

Stephen Gray, in company with two brothers, came to America, from Ireland, more than a quarter of a century prior to America's independence. The two brothers made a permanent settlement in this country, while Stephen, fond of sea- life, returned to the ocean, became captain of a vessel, and spent many years on the water, visiting all the ports of the world.

Returning from the sea in middle life, he married Eunice Bennett, and settled in Old Milford, Connecticut. His wife's family came originally from Scotland. After the manner of frontier life he sustained himself, and reared a family of ten children, whose names are as follows : Asel, Stephen, Eunice, Coolee, Lois, Rachel, Thaddeus, Betsey, Jabez, and Molley.

In his old age he removed to what then was a wilderness, settling in New Lebanon township, Columbia county, New York. Here he and his stalwart sons battled with the forests and wild beasts until they had conquered a portion of the wilderness and made a home for themselves. The captain spent here a happy life, and was always fond of relating to his family the adventures of his sea-life, one of which we here reproduce.

While in South America he was solicited to attend a feast, given by the chief men of the city in which he was temporarily staying, and as a refusal to be pres- ent would have given offense, he accepted the invitation. The host was a white man, and received his guest and ushered him to the reception-room, to be pre- sented in form to the hostess. The lady was attired in the richest silks, but her

. See Observations on Population in Russell for discussion of this subject.

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LITH. BY L. H. EVENTS. PHILA, PA.

THE LATE RES. OF C .V.GRAY, NOW OCCUPIED BY A.J. & J. H. GRAY, MIDDLEFIELD TP., GEAUGA CO., O.

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face was obscured by a mask. On rising for the introduction, she had the mis- fortune to lose her mask, and there stood before the astonished captain a huge negress, as black as Egyptian darkness. The group presented an interesting spectacle,-an annoyed and embarrassed hostess, a furious and enraged host, an amused and astonished guest. Dinner being announced, the guests were led to the dining apartment, and here occurred another event that carried horror to the heart of him who was a stranger to such scenes, which were, however, at that time of common occurrence in that benighted land. One of the servants, in serving the soup, had the misfortune to spill a portion of the contents of one bowl on "our lady's" silken robes. The host, already in ill humor by reason of what had occurred, became infuriated, and instantly drew his bowie-knife, and cut the servant's throat from ear to ear. This done, and the unfortunate victim removed, the feast proceeded just as if nothing of moment had happened. The captain lost no time in taking leave of the company, and hastily retired, with the hope that he might never again witness another such a sight.

Thaddeus Gray was the seventh child of Stephen and Eunice Gray, and was born most probably in the year 1750, though this is not established. He entered the service of his country at the beginning of the Revolutionary war, and served as captain for three years. After this he was alternately in the field and on the farm until peace was declared. In 1778 he was united in marriage to Miss Sylvia Russell. This lady was the daughter of Daniel Russell, a gunsmith, and who did eminent service for his country during the Revolutionary war by manu- facturing and repairing guns for the use of his countrymen. To show of what heroic mould he was, it is related of him that having by accident broken his leg, and amputation becoming necessary, and there being no surgeon in the neighbor- hood, he, with his own hands, by the aid of his gunsmith's tools and two of his daughters to hold him erect, accomplished the difficult task himself with such skill that the wound in time healed and he was able to again resume his labor. Thaddeus Gray and wife were the parents of the following children : Clarissa, Esther, Daniel R., Alvin W., William B., Lorinda, Margaret D., Andrew G., Erastus M., and Colonius V.

Colonius V. Gray was the youngest son of Thaddeus, and was but three years of age when his father died. At the age of eighteen he was apprenticed to learn the carpenter's trade, and after one year's service without remuneration received three dollars per month for his second year's work. At twenty-one he became his own master, and at the age of twenty-two he married Miss Electa Ketchum,

daughter of Justus Ketchum, then of North Adams, Massachusetts, but formerly of Long Island. The wife of Justus Ketchum was Lucy Griffin, and they were the parents of the following children : Roxa, Calvin, Electa, Sabrina, Justus, Jr., Nathaniel, Lucy, Anson, and Silas.

Immediately following his marriage, Colonius Gray removed to Middlefield, Geauga County, Ohio, where he arrived in the spring of 1830, with a set of carpenters' tools and thirty-four dollars in money, his wife having seventy-five dollars more, which she had saved from her own carnings. Uniting these sums, he contracted for one hundred and forty acres of land, lying on the west side of the north centre road, and on the east side of the east and west centre road, in Middlefield, and made his first payment. Both husband and wife were indus- trious, and as they " pulled together" success for them was inevitable. While he worked at his trade at fifty cents per day, she spun wool for her neighbors, and each was soon able to own a cow and calf, which at the end of three years realized to him in money the sum of twenty-six dollars. This was paid on their contract, and thus after the lapse of many years of toil and hardship their land was paid for and their home was all their own. Mr. Gray, however, was inured to hard- ship, and was a man of giant strength. He used to carry home from mill, nine miles distant, the product of two bushels of wheat in three separate bags,-the flour in one, the bran in another, and the middlings in the third. It would seem to-day a superhuman undertaking to carry so heavy and inconvenient burden so great a distance through almost a trackless forest, having to cross numerous streams, often swollen by heavy rains. But to a man of so great strength and such sterling grit the feat did not seem so herculean.

Mr. and Mrs. Gray practiced the most rigid economy. This they were obliged to do. They had to be content with the most simple household con- veniences, such as he could himself construct from the limbs and trunks of forest- trees. His farming utensils, with which he raised his first corn, potatoes, etc., were a wooden spade and a crooked stick for a hoe. By his industry he was enabled not only to pay for his original purchase, but to add to it until he became the owner of two hundred and eighty-seven acres of land, now the homestead of his children, besides a purchase in Minnesota of quite a large tract. Mr. Gray died in Middlefield, January 6, 1871, in the sixty-third year of his age. His children are as follows : A. J. Gray, A. A. Gray, C. S. Gray, and J. H. Gray. The first named and the last occupy the old homestead, and, like their father, are men of industry and intelligence.

CHESTER TOWNSHIP.

THE twelve southern townships were erected into the township of Burton in 1806. I find this in the records of the doings of the commissioners of Geauga County, under the date of October, 1816, the year after the close of the war of 1812.

On petition of Wm. N. Hudson and others, inhabitants of No. 8 in the ninth range, Chester, praying that No. 8, with No. 7 (Russell), may be set off from the township of Burton, the petition was granted, the same.to be called by the name of Chester. No. 7 remained a part of the new township till March, 1827.

An outline sketch of the people, and of so much of the territory of this new creation of the commissioners as is included in the present Chester, will be here given.

The northeast corner of Chester touches the southwest of Chardon. Munson lies on her east, and Mayfield, in Cuyahoga county, bounds her west. Kirtland is on her north, and her former counterpart, forest-covered Russell,-which was of very little use to her,-is on her south.

Chester is one of the best watered, best drained townships in the county. The east branch of the Chagrin rises on her eastern border, from which it receives seven or eight tributaries, large enough to find a place on her map; while the western receives a larger number from her westerly portion. They seem to flow every way, almost, from her elevated central portion. These streams, with the general elevation of her lands, gives every variety to her surface, except the level, which can only be found in narrow strips along her beautiful valleys. It is high, rolling, hilly, though not broken. Her soil is what might be expected,-generally clayey, strong, tenacious; retains and gives back to the generous fertilizer, in good

crops, whatever he intrusts to it. Grazing and dairying is the prevailing indus- trial interest, and four cheese-factories are in active business in the township. The character of her soil and position indicates her forest products,-maple, beech, oak, ash, chestnut, poplar, hickory, and the other usual varieties. The products of her sugar orchards still make a considerable figure in her statistics, and, like her sisters, she furnishes fine harvests of apples and other fruits.

As may be seen by her map, the township was divided into three tracts of unequal area by lines running east and west. The northern contained four thousand six hundred and ninety acres; the middle, four thousand and thirty-eight ; the south, six thousand and seven. These were again divided by lines at right angles with each other into lots of uniform size, but not uniform with each other. The boundaries and tract lines, at least, were run, in 1796, under the direction of Joshua Stowe, of Middletown, Connecticut, aided by Seth Pease, Amzi Atwater, and others.

At the old division of the purchase, it is said that so much of the Connecticut Reserve as lay east of the Cuyahoga was divided into what was called drafts, ninety-three in number. As the lands were supposed to be of unequal values, the townships were adjusted by an equalizing committee, and several were divided into fractions and annexed to some draft. In this way the north tract, No. 1, of Chester, was attached to North Hampton, now in Summit county, and was owned by Solomon Stoddard. The middle, or second, annexed to Aurora, Portage county, and owned by King, Sheldon, Swift, and others, of Suffield, Connecticut. The third was annexed to Hudson, Summit county, and owned by David Judson, Birdseye Norton, Stephen Baldwin, Theodore Parmlee, and Sam'l Oviatt, of

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Goshen, Connecticut, and Nathaniel Norton, of Bloomfield, New York. It is not now known who made the subdivisions, or when. Theodore Lacy divided the south tract in forty lots, in 1801 ; the middle, or tract two, into twenty lots, as was the north also.

THE OLD CHILLICOTHE.

As the laying out of this road preceded the settlement of Chester, mention may here be made of it. Like all the old State roads, it was established by an act of the General Assembly, which named three persons, called commissioners, who ran and marked the line. This was actually usually done by one of the three. General Edward Paine, father of Captain Edward Paine, late of Char- don, was the commissioner who did this bit of old-time engineering, in 1801. His surveyor was Abram Tappan, often named in the records of those days. It extended from Painesville, meandering southwest through Mentor, thence crookedly to Kirtland flats, where it turns more southerly, and missing the centres, traverses Chester, Russell, Aurora, Hudson, to the old Portage, and down the Tuscarawas to its junction with the Walhonding, to where Coshocton stands, to Chillicothe, the old capital. General Paine was directed to " open the road," which he did by blazing the trees and lopping the brush,-" underbrushing" a way along on the best ground for a road nearest the marked line.

SETTLEMENT AND SETTLERS.

I return to Dr. Wm. N. Hudson and his associates of that petition, and note their arrival in the Chester woods, with some words of their lives. The mislay- ing hands of time and accident have placed that old paper beyond my reach ; but the kinder hand of S. B. Philbrick, Esq., has placed two or three old letters, from Dr. Hudson and other men, in my possession, which will help me to some interesting facts of some of the stout old pioneers.

Justice Miner, in point of time and importance, has the precedence. He was born in Norfolk, Connecticut, in 1762. At a time not stated, he emigrated to Lima, Ontario county, New York. It must have been in 1800, for after a year's residence he started, in 1801, farther west ; was a land-owner at Lima, for he traded off his farm, and in company with Harvy Sheffield, a son-in-law, a son Philo, Harvey Nettleton, and a Mr. Allen, he started for the Western Reserve, driving about forty head of cattle belonging to different persons then in the western woods. These were distributed, and proceeding to our nameless five miles square of woods, and what they held, he selected three hundred acres in the southeast section, and about the 1st of May he commenced the first clearing and built the first cabin ever known in Chester. This was on the farm now owned by William Smith. After cutting over some four acres, they returned to Lima to prepare and remove their families. In the February of 1802 the little band,- Miner, Sr., his wife and five unmarried children, Sheffield, his wife and infant child, and Philo and his wife,-started, with ox-teams, to traverse the two hun- dred and fifty miles of intervening roadless wilderness to their lonely hut in its circle of trees. On sleds were they, and in three days came a thaw, which delayed them a week. They camped out more than once ere they reached Buffalo, which consumed two weeks. Here young Mrs. Philo remained with a sister living there. Leaving her, they pushed on to Cattaraugus. The snows left and spring was coming, and they rented an old block-house of the Indians, where, with the oxen, the party remained, while the two young men pushed west to find some sort of a craft to freight them up the lake coast to the Reserve. They heard of one at the Chagrin, but failed to get it. They finally found one, badly stove, at Austinburg, which they secured and repaired. In this the adventurers coasted pleasantly down the lake. On the morning of the last day of this voyage a furious gale broke their cordage and tore their little sail to shreds. Nothing but courage and coolness saved them. They finally made the Cattaraugus, and an Indian helped to drag their shallop onto land, above the danger of being swept away. They went on to Buffalo for Mrs. Philo. Here they met a Mr. Phelps, whom the Miners supposed to be the well-known Judge Seth Phelps. Many things tended to this idea ; nor can I determine who he was. He was there with a second wife and two small children, on his way to the Reserve. Judge Phelps, as Origen Miner calls him, found their party a most valuable accession. He was quite a sailor, and they found him a man of courage and enterprise and great intelligence. At Cattaraugus the boat was overhauled, made stanch, the goods packed, and the four families-fifteen souls-finally embarked on the almost unknown waters which have so often since proved treacherous. The passengers and crew on top of the goods made a too heavy deck-load. April 15, the expe- dition, with tents for landing, sailed out of Cattaraugus creek, with prow west- ward. The voyage was prosperous. There were nightly landings, unladings, and tent-pitchings on the woody margin of the lake, moon and star lit, camp-fires built, springs found, suppers, night-watches, and care, breakfasts at dawn, when the skies were scanned, and if they smiled the tents were struck, the boat laden,

and another embarkation. Sometimes they remained weather-bound. On May day they entered the mouth of Grand river, landed at General Paine's, who wel- comed them with the heartiness of the pioneers, old-school gentleman as he was. Meantime, the oxen had been driven by two younger, and hitherto unnamed, men,-John Sheffield, a brother of Harvey, and John Miner, a son of Justice. These seem to have made the journey in ten or eleven days, and took the cattle to Burton. On arrival of the boat, the men went to Burton for the teams, while the women and children remained at General Paine's, except Mrs. Miner, Jr., who was conducted to the new cabin to cook,-the chronicle hath it,-but really to charm the rude beginnings with her woman's presence; and thus she was the first of Anglo-Saxon blood to place her woman's foot on the untouched ground of Chester. The Phelpses, as is said, remained with General Paine. The last year's chopping was cleared and planted with corn, and another house built. In July all the Miners, goods and household, were sheltered in their new homes. It seems Mrs. Sheffield lingered at Painesville, or Burton, or elsewhere on the way, to add to Harvey's household joys and cares another baby,-the present Mrs. Benjamin Ellsworth. He erected a house, and moved his wife and babies into it on the 1st of September. This was on the farm now owned by a Mr. Post. These three went on with their rude but rich forest life till the next May came, with its wild-wood buds and flowers. Then came also another wonder. On the 9th of that month our young wife, Mrs. Philo, the Eve of this savage paradise, gave to it the first child of European blood. The little bud was a girl, and they called her Altha,-a pretty name.

During this summer of 1803, Dr. John Miner, brother of Justice, came on, took up a lot adjoining the land of the older residents, made a small clearing, built a cabin, returned and brought on his three children, and moved into it in the spring of 1804. I find no mention of a wife. A Mr. Beard also came in and built a house. Mrs. Harvey Sheffield also increased the small community by the addition of a small boy, the second birth of Chester. It will be remembered that John Sheffield came plodding along, driving the oxen. John knew what he was about, and so did Anna Miner, all the time. In April, David Hudson, Esq., came through the woods from the township of that name, and joined them in wedlock ; and so this eventful 1804 opened with a baby and a bride.

These two primal events of human history were quickly followed by the in- evitable third, in such unusual form that it is told in every history of the peopling of the then wilderness. It is about the only thing said of Geauga County in Mr. Howe's worthless " Historical Collections." Dr. John Miner had moved into his bark-covered cabin, still without floor or door, in the midst of the woods, and, with the men of the little settlement, was busy with the pressing necessities of the present and plans for the future. From the birth and marriage the season had ripened to mid July, when one of the fearful tornadoes, engendered on the lake, that have more than once smitten and devastated the highlands a few miles from the coast line, struck the forests of Chester. Serene was the morning, when slowly and silently the storm-cloud, black as night, cast its shadow over the wide still woods. Slowly it arose to the zenith, when its van could be seen through the green tree-tops. In the admonition of its shadow, beasts fled to their inner- most haunts, and birds sought their deepest covers; while the known dwellers of the wood, with a boding sense of danger, half instinct and half the offspring of a higher intelligence, fearful of the defense which their cabins might yield, shrunk with pallid faces into their darkened recesses. A roar of loosened, resistless winds, mingled with the crash of the destroyed forest, was heard swiftly approaching from the northwest. An instant, and it struck a single, contin- uous, awful buffet ; and where had stood the century-grown forest was a wide mass of huge prostrate trunks, broken shafts, upturned roots, splintered, shattered, and intermingled limbs .and tree-tops, with the broad expanse of raging storm- cloud above. Then came the thunder and a deluge of water, while the tornado went shrieking and tearing its devastating way to the southeast, overthrowing the beautiful forests of Newbury and Burton. In the central path of its fury it left nothing standing. A sixth of the forest of Chester, says Dr. Hudson, per- ished in its breath that hour. Dr. Miner placed his children on the ground, below the naked " sleepers" which were to sustain the floor, and this saved them. After the first crash he stepped from his own cover to observe the effects, when a giant oak, grown and hardened by the rains and snows of a thousand years, from around which the lesser and frailer children of the forest had been swept, yielded to its now unbroken fury, and fell with its full weight and force on the doomed cabin, crushing it as if made of hollow reeds. Dr. Miner was instantly killed. His sagacious care saved the now orphaned children. As no mention is made of a mother, we infer there was none at that time. The effect, beyond the gloom which for years the event cast on the survivors, was disastrous to the settle- ment of Chester. Beard moved away, and wherever the tale of it was told east- ward emigrants sought homes elsewhere. Dr. Miner's tragic death thus became the first demise of Chester. His crushed remains were buried by the hands

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of the sorrowing pilgrims, and his children sent to the care of kindred at the East.

I hastily follow the interesting Miners of the Chester woods. Justice was twice married. His first wife was Mabel Plumb, and they were united in 1779. She died in April, 1811, and he wedded Hannah N. Moss, January 1, 1812. She died in October, 1831. He followed them July 27, 1850, aged seventy-one. His eight children were by Mabel. Of these, Philo, who was a man of ideas, and a justice of the peace, moved to Michigan in 1831, and died the next year. Charlotte, Mrs. H. Sheffield, died in Chester in 1855. Sarah died there in the early days of 1811. Anna died in Illinois in 1845; John in 1854; Betsey in Michi- gan in 1859. Of the whole family, Origen only is living. He is now seventy-two, and lives in North Munson, on a small place, a man of great intelli- gence, full of the lore and love of the pioneers, and has contributed more of the early history of Geauga, especially of Munson, and the religious movements of his day, than any other writer in the county.

In 1803 the first apple-seeds were planted. From these sprang many orchards, especially those of Mr. Smith, Mr. Wells, the Sheffields' orchard ; also, that of Post, Pratt, and Jones.

After the disaster of 1804, no new settlement was made till 1806, when William Archer came on, and married Sally (Sarah) Miner, and settled in the neighborhood. This was the second wedding in Chester. Following the venerable Dr. Hudson, from that to 1809, no accessions by emigrants were made to the small community. On the 2d day of May of that year that gentleman and a little brother passed up the old Chillicothe, a mere trail, almost impassable from fullen trees, with a led horse, from Aurora, the nearest settlement south, into the Chester, or Wooster woods, intending to make a settlement at what is now called Chester Cross-roads. He found it difficult even to trace the trail, so indistinct was it. To lose it would be a disaster in the otherwise trackless wilderness. He " blazed" the trees-hewed off the outside bark with an axe-as he went. He seems to have located there that summer. That season, on the application of the Wooster men, the commissioners of the county appropriated ten dollars to reopen the road between Chester and Aurora. The population of Chester was out aiding in this work for a week, camping in the woods, and finally the way was made passable. The doctor, then young Mr. Hudson, of barely twenty-one, built by the spring, where a Mr. Hinkly also built, about 1850.

On the 22d of August of the same year Mr. Hudson undertook to remove his very young wife from Hudson to his new cabin in the woods in Chester. He traveled with an ox-carriage on runners. They reached Aurora that night. The next he put up on the hospitable bank of classic West Silver creek, this boy and girl husband and wife. He unyoked the team and placed a bell on the " near" ox, and turned them to feed on the rank herbage of the rich bottom. A brush- wood leafy bower-" bough-house"-the young man constructed, their only shelter. It was raining-rained all night. He intended, ere darkness, to yoke and chain up the oxen. Beguiled into forgetfulness in their leafy, leaky bower, the two passed the night drowsing and listening for the bell which clanged near, grew faint to a tinkle, and faded off in dreams. What did they care for oxen, those wedded lovers ? On search the next morning, he found them not. After filling them- selves, forgetful of the pair, they had returned to Aurora, whither, leaving his wife by the creek, he followed them with what expedition he could, recovered and hurried the treacherous brutes back to the lonely, waiting wife, with whom he reached Chester that night, and they became, he says, the sixth family there. John Miner, son of Justice, was married that year. Like Cain, he may have found his bride in the land of Nod, for I find no mention of her. * In 1811 came Jeremiah Iles, who wooed and wedded Betsey Miner, and made a lodge- ment in the neighborhood. Also another Sheffield, Alpheus by name, came and took Dorothy, a daughter of Dr. Miner-who seems to have returned-to wife. A marrying people were the Chester folk. The same year, 1811, Asahel Gil- more moved in from Massachusetts. The next year came also his brother James and family, their children mostly unmarried, and settled on lot 12, tract 2, the site of the village, near the centre. On the fall of Detroit, in August, all the males but John Miner hastened off to defend Cleveland. In their absence a strange rumor got itself whispered in the Chester woods that the Indians were scalping the defenseless women and children in the settlements east of them, and all the women, by a common impulse, gathering their children, fled and hid them- selves in the woods. John hunted them up at nightfall, and induced them to return to the house of Harvy Sheffield, where he and a young Sheffield stood guard, or pretended to. In the morning came a joyful contradiction of the rumor, and a sense of safety was restored.

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History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio, Part 56

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

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