USA > Ohio > Huron County > History of Huron County, Ohio, Its Progress and Development, Volume I > Part 11
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These hunters needed no compass; the trees, the sun and stars took its place. The bark of an aged tree is much thicker and rougher on the north side than on the south ; and the same may be said of the moss ; it is much thicker and stronger on the north than on the south side of the tree; hence he could walk freely and carelessly through the woods and always strike the exact point intended, while any but a woodsman would have become bewildered and lost.
PIONEER BOYHOOD ON THE FIRELANDS.
BY J. O. CUNNINGHAM.
Paper read before the Firelands Historical Society, Norwalk, June 27, 1900, and published in the Firelands Pioneer a few months later.
I have been asked to come from my home in Illinois to meet the few remaining Pioneers of the Firelands and such of their descendants as may assemble here, for the purpose of indulging in reminiscences of the long past, which cover the boy-
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hocd days of many of us, and which are a part of the history of this, our boyhcod home.
Although almost half a century intervenes between the present and the bright morning in August, 1852, when my father, with his two-horse wagon, transported two of his boys, with their trunks, containing their few worldly possessions, to the nearest railroad station, for the purpose of taking the train for a distant state, and thereby, in fact, forever terminating our relations to Huron county as home, yet this visit, and the occasion of it, awakens emotions and recollections shared per- haps by none of you who have yet to sever your connection with the homes of your childhood.
"It brings me to my childhood back, As if I trod its very track, And felt its very gladness."
But to the story which I am to relate: The eighth day of June, 1833, ter- minated the journey of two immigrant families, the heads of which were brothers, from an eastern state to the Firelands, in far away Ohio. Such it seemed to those families before they started and to their friends left behind, and such they realized it to be before they had completed their journey. A steam craft on Lake Erie had furnished the transportation to the port of Huron, while, after time spent in pros- pecting by the heads of the families, ox teams did the remainder of the work of landing the families, of one of which the boy to whose experience you are asked to listen was a member, near the prospective home in the forests of Clarksfield.
This journey of twenty-five miles made through Berlin, Florence and Wake- man, to the center of Clarksfield, was not made over the good roads and easy grades now to be found, but over traces of roads then newly cut out or blazed through the forests, with no bridges over many of the streams and no artificial drainage. Those who remember the vile reputation of "Wakeman Woods," of that day, will not be at a loss to fully appreciate the horrors of that journey. No wonder that the young mothers turned their thoughts many times with tearful eyes to the homes they had left.
The family did not find a ready-made farm house, of comfortable capacity, with the accompaniments of barn and out houses, orchard and garden in which to rest its weary and travelworn members. It did not find friends who had gone before and who were ready to open hospitable doors to the newcomers and make easy their settlement and welcome their coming. What they did find was an unbroken, heavy forest of beech, maple, walnut, oak and other kinds of timber, such as bid a mad defiance to the pioneers all over Ohio at the beginning of the century.
The kindness of a pioneer family which had preceded this family to the depths of this forest by a few months, gave shelter to the unsheltered for six weeks and until an opening in the forest upon the site of the future home could be made and a house could be erected. This house was, of course, of logs, but care was taken that they should be straight logs, and that they should be nicely notched at the corners and smoothly hewn on the inside, as they were placed in position, so that the new house, though covered only with elm bark at the first, was both presentable and comfortable. Think of it, dear housekeepers, the first fireside of this family, where the mother cooked for many months, was beside a large stump, near the
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door, with no covering over it save that furnished by the native forests left with a purpose.
This house being finished (and it is remembered that the particular house had neither closed windows nor door during the first summer, nor until frosts and cold winds of autumn made them necessary), the next thing to be done was with fire and ax and strong arms to drive back the domain of the forest and make room for the field which was to produce the living. This was a slow process and occupied the labors and efforts of years.
One of the pioneer preachers herein named, in 1866, thirty-three years after the immigration of the family to Clarksfield, conducted the funeral services of the father, Hiram W. Cunningham, and in the biographical notice of the deceased given, said that he had personally chopped, burned and cleared one hundred acres of Clarksfield's heavy timber. Year by year the cleared circle became larger and the demand for cribs and a barn more imperative.
The first year of course, yielded no returns for the family support. The lim- ited amount of money brought as a result of the sale of the little farm in York state, was all used up in paying the expense of removal or in making the first payment on the purchased land, so the family must be fed and clothed by some other means, No resources remained other than the hands of the father, which were skilled in carpentry and wood craft of other kinds, and the grinding needs of the immi- grant family for many years made the requisitions upon this resource continuous and exacting. So, for several years, and until fruitful fields occupied the space of the primeval forest, the day's work of the father furnished the food of the family from year to year.
The boy well remembers the first attempt at corn and wheat raising among the green stumps of a patch just cleared of the timber where no plow could be used, or if used, could live an hour. The corn was planted, not with a check-row corn planter, nor with a hoe, even, but with an ax, which was driven through the roots into the virgin soil a few inches, the corn dropped in and the ground closed over the seed by the foot. No cultivation could be given it other than by chopping out the fire weeds, but the hot sun and the rich soil did the work, and the returns well repaid the effort. In the fall the removal of the corn made way for a seeding of wheat. In this manner the pioneer provided for his table.
The satisfaction felt by the pioneer in eating from his first crop, produced under the difficulties here delineated, cannot be well told, even by one who has realized it, any more than it can be realized by one who has not passed through the experience. The capitalist may say to himself, "Soul, thou hast much good laid up for many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry," but his satisfaction does not ap- proach the happiness of the pioneer, who, having cleared the forest, has demon- strated his capacity to produce a crop.
Being thus established in a home, which for most of the time intervening be- tween the date here given and the legal majority of the boy in question, was his only home, made better year by year as the means were secured, let us look at the surroundings :
Clarksfield had then been settled sixteen years only, and everything was new, in the town as well as in the adjoining towns. Smith Starr, Benjamin Stiles, Sam- uel Husted, and possibly some others, had moved "out of the old house into the
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new" frame and plastered house, but other than the very few lived in their pioneer houses, similar to the one above described. The Rowlands, Barnums, Woods, Fur- longs, Bissells, Clarks, Grays, Days, Lees, Blackmans, Smiths, Perceys and nearly all of the population of the township had progressed no further than the log-house stage of civilization. These houses were generally built in the most primitive style of architecture of that day, with log gables, roofs held in place by log weight poles, instead of by the use of nails, doors hung on wooden hinges. with wooden latches, which obeyed the pull on the leathern string from the outside. With puncheon or slab floors and well-chinked and an annual "daubin'," the home could defy the elements without, and by the aid of a fire upon the hearth of the wide fireplace, built of rocks gathered from the fields or from the river bed, supporting a mud and stick chimney, the home was made comfortable at all times. Before these fires were cooked and served the homely meals, and around them were gathered as happy families as now gather around the anthracite fires in the elegant houses which have succeeded these pioneer homes.
The clearings were small and mostly confined to the neighborhood of the "Hol- low," where the first settlement of the town was made, or along the roads leading therefrom, and to go to Florence or Norwalk, one must encounter the horrors of the roads, or trails, which served for roads, leading through "Wakeman Woods," or "Townsend Woods," terms which, even at this distance of time, awaken a shudder.
The boy remembers a night spent in a mud hole with his parents in the road leading from Norwalk to Clarksfield, about April, 1836, when an almost empty wagon was too much for the team, and it was only after daylight, the next morn- ing, that aid came and enabled us to release ourselves by doubling teams. The good roads now leading to Florence and to Norwalk from Clarksfield, through fruitful fields bordered by beautiful homes, give no intimation of the terrors that awaited the traveler along the same lines sixty-five years since.
The only roads that existed in the town of Clarksfield at the period written about, which had the semblance of roads or deserved the name, were those lead- ing north, south and east of the Hollow, and these were yet much bordered by woods, and in many places were of the very primitive corduroy character. Other roads, or what are now known as public highways, in the town, were not then even "chopped out," with few exceptions, and neighborhood trails across lots and through the woods were permitted by tolerant settlers as favors to those who, like our family, had essayed to settle back from the settlements before then made. It is remembered that the families spoken of only reached their leafy, primeval home, at Clarksfield center, by leaving the main road a half mile east of the Hollow, and by following ax-men. who went before the wagons and cut out a trail. It was many years after this time that the roads were so improved as to be passable for teams and wagons, and not until after 1850, were the roads leading south and west from the center of the town, anything more than trails, once chopped out and partly grown up with briers and other impediments. It was a long time, and only after the roads were bordered by enclosed fields, that they were made passable their entire length, and it was unnecessary for the traveler to make detours here and there to avoid the swamps and swales which so often intruded across the roads. The corduroy period was a long one, and the higher duty of the settler to provide
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himself and family a shelter and food before he found time to make roads. kept these necessary appliances of civilization waiting many years.
Bridges over the two confluents of the Vermillion river were then few and of an ephemeral character. The substantial stone and steel structures which now span those beautiful streams, not only command admiration as triumphs of engin- eering skill, but they serve to bring back recollection of early efforts at bridge building. Where were once long stretches of corduroy passage ways over the black alder swamps, are now seen single stone culverts, which serve to bridge the murky waterway formerly so dreaded by the pioneer.
At the period indicated there was no house of worship in the township, nor in any adjoining townships, though worshippers were not wanting ; for no district of country within the nation was more largely settled by religious people than was the tract of country known as the Firelands. The pioneer school houses, the scantily furnished cabins, and the leafy forests were made to do duty as places of religious worship to meet the want of the settlers of which their self-imposed banishment from older homes had deprived them.
Among the most lasting and thrilling recollections of the boy whose story this is, are those connected with those primitive gatherings. Take the scene of a few settlers gathered up from the scattered settlements, connected only by forest trails, in one of these pioneer log school houses, where the only furniture was that manufactured by the help of an ax, saw and auger from the outer slab of a saw log; where the log structure, dedicated to learning and the arts, was made without the use of a nail or article of iron, and was as free from metals in its construction as was King Solomon's temple ; where one side of the little room was devoted to the fireplace, and its walls made impenetrable to the cold winds by the "chinkin' and the daubin'," but where the hearts of the gathered worshippers were one in sympathy and love to the Maker, and their speaker, a circuit rider or ex- horter, fired by the love of souls, in loud and electrifying appeals called upon the sinner and the backslider to repent while the opportunity yet remained; where the effect of these appeals brought the careless and the scoffer to their knees and led wicked men to better lives-these scenes, now no longer to be seen, left impres- sions upon the beholders not to be forgotten.
In the way of religious gatherings of that day, the boy remembers most vividly the camp meetings, now known to the people of this day only in tradi- tion. One in Clarksfield in 1837, one in Wakeman in 1841, and one in Rochester in 1846, came under his observation and will serve as typical of the class. These meetings were generally arranged to come off after haying, late in the summer or early in the fall, when worldly cares were less likely to distract attention. A piece of native forest was chosen, where good drainage with shade and water were to be had. A plat of two or three acres or more was cleared of the underbrush and the ground smoothed and leveled; at one end of the plat was erected the preachers' tent, facing inward, at the front of which was a stand for speakers, under cover. Upon the other three sides were erected tents or cabins to answer for the accommodation of the people. In front of the preachers' stand was an en- closure of seats for from fifty to one hundred people, the enclosure being formed by poles placed upon posts or crotches set in the ground. The purpose of this enclosure was for the accommodation of circles for prayer and for those seeking
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after the light of religious experience, which we might call the anxious seat, but which the irreverent of those days called the "bull-pen." Beyond this enclosure were seats for hearers, made by placing slabs or planks across supports of logs and timbers, arranged so as to provide aisles leading towards the preachers' stand. To these tents people came from many miles around, bringing beds, furniture and provisions for a week's outing, and here were carried on all the household arts for a comfortable stay. Cooking was done by open fires in the rear of the tents, and sleeping accommodations made upon piles of clean straw and bed clothing within the apartments of the tents. The tin horn at the preachers' tent served the purpose of a "church going bell," in calling the people from their tents to the gen- eral auditorium for the several services, and laggards in the tents met the severe reprimand of the "preacher in charge." Rules were enacted for the government of the encampment and severely enforced.
To these gatherings came all sorts of people for all sorts of purposes. Re- ligious exercises and experiences were not the only incentives. There came the gos- siper, the curiosity seeker, fun lover and the horse trader. There came the sin- cere religionist, yearning for the salvation of his neighbor, and there came the irreverent scoffer of things held sacred by the other class. The gatherings were not always characterized by the sanctity that pervades church-going assemblies of this day, but frequently made work for the grand juries. In other cases the disorders created by the irreverent were informally and promptly treated on the grounds to doses of muscular Christiaity from an athletic preacher or muscular layman, a remedy swifter than that afforded by the law and generally more ef- fective.
It is far easier now to describe the organization and proceedings of such a gathering than to accurately measure the effects upon the participants. The measure of one relates to Time, while the effects of the other can only be known in Eternity. Many who came to scoff and ridicule, left the grounds rejoicing in a new life, and here steps in the religious life were commenced which terminated only in a hopeful death.
These school houses and camp meetings produced or furnished the arena of action of such eminent pioneer preachers of the Firelands as Leonard B. Gurley, William B. Disbrow, James McIntire, James A. Kellum, John Mitchell, Adam Poe, James McMahon, Richard Biggs, H. O. Sheldon, Russell Bigelow, E. R. Jewett, Thomas Barkdull, William C. Pierce, of the Methodist Episcopal church, and Revs. Betts and Streeter, of the Presbyterian church ; Rev. David Marks and Rev. Fairfield, of the Baptist church, as well as many others whose names are re- membered by the descendants of the pioneers with reverence.
Most of these men were from time to time in the early days guests at the home of the family in question, and the boy remembers of having heard most of them from the pulpit or the desk of the school house.
In this connection it may be said that it is probable that Sunday schools were organized and carried on upon the Firelands at an early day, for as early as 1836, at Clarksfield Hollow, a school was in operation, conducted by members of dif- ferent denominations. I remember being in this school at its beginning for that season ; remember that Rev. Streeter was at the head of it, and the lesson of the
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day, which will be found at Matt. III., 1-6, beginning: "In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea."
The library in use is remembered for its utter want of adaptation to the needs of children. Instead of being of such a character of matter as children would become interested in, its books treated upon the most severe and sober theological questions, such as children of no time take to.
A Sunday school celebration held near Berlin chapel, between Berlinville and Florence, on July 4, in the year 1843, is remembered by this particular boy for the many children it called together from all of the surrounding towns, the pretty ad- dress delivered by Mr. Dwight, and particularly for the good things we had to eat.
CLOTHING OF THE PIONEER.
The clothing in which the pioneer boy was clad was not tailor-made, nor was it even hand-me-down, ready-made clothing, but the result of the summer work and the cunning skill of his mother's fingers, which worked early and late. In the spring of each year a crop of flax was sown, and at maturity was pulled, rotted, broken in the flax-brake and hatcheled by the men folks, when it was ready to be carded, spun and woven into cloth, called "tow and linen," for the next year's clothing. So of the wool of the few sheep kept. The price of wool in the markets of the country was not then a burning question as now ; the limited supply was scarcely sufficient for the domestic wants of the families of the pioneer. The sup- ply was either carded into bats at home or carried to the woolen mill and made into "rolls," ready for the spinning wheel. The same mother's hands spun it into yarn ready for the weaver or ready for her winter's knitting into socks. The spun yarn, dyed in butternut or blue dye, sufficed for the "filling," in a web, which was of cotton yarn, and the product was known as "jeans." The weaver's work done, the same mother's nimble fingers cut, fitted and made the tow and linen or the jeans into coats, pants and vests for the boys.
As time passed on and the family became more forehanded, which meant, had more sheep and other stuff and something to sell in the market, the cloth was made of all wool and went to the cloth dresser for fulling and dressing. and came home shining like broadcloth. Here came the need of the tailor, who cut the cloth ready for the itinerant sewing woman, and the boy came out in a suit of "fulled cloth," with shining brass buttons. So the work of clothing the boys developed from year to year until maturity enabled him to dress in "store clothes" from his own earnings.
It was not always that the last year's suit lasted well until this year's suit made it appearance, in which case the boy, in the interim between the passing away of the former and the coming of the latter, might have passed for Riley's "Raggedy Man." It must have been during one of these destitute periods that the mother in question, ever alert to the needs of the children, wrote to her mother in the east. in a letter dated November 17, 1839, the original of which came to the hands of your essayist a few years since, and is now preserved with the greatest care, as follows: "We have raised our living this season, and it seems much better than to buy it and not know where it is to come from. Our children are well, but very ragged,-not having any wool of late, we are quite
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PUBLIC SCHOOL, NEW LONDON. OHIO
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destitute of clothing. You wrote you had sent me some stocking yarn, but I have not received it yet. If I could get it I would make my fingers fly."
This letter was sealed with a red wafer. It bears the postmark of Clarks- field, November 29, and is charged with eighteen and three-fourths cents post- age. Letters patent of nobility from a sovereign king or emperor would not be prized higher. It gives a phase of family and pioncer history not to be for- gotten. It convicts the pioneer boy of once having belonged to a crowd of "very ragged" children, but it brings no blush.
Boots and shoes were not brought to the pioneer home ready made and in assortments sure to meet all demands. Hides, taken from animals killed for family supplies of meat, or, more often, hides taken from domestic animals dying from the murrain, were taken to the near by tannery, dressed into leather and were, by the neighboring shoemaker, made up into boots and shoes for the family, with the emphasis upon the word shoes for, as a matter of true history, the pioneer boy in question never possessed the greatly coveted boots until he was permitted to earn them by work for a neighbor, at thirteen years of age.
SCHOOLS.
For years after the period of this writing, the settlement in question had no school, and the only school opportunities were obtained by sending the children to neighboring districts, the tenure of which privileges to us outsiders depend- ing upon the demands made by children within the districts. Long tramps through the woods and through swamps spanned by fallen trees only, was the price paid by the children for the instruction received by them. Finally, in the spring of 1840, a truly pioneer school house came to the doors of this family, and its description may be taken as that of pioneer school houses throughout Ohio and the west. It was built, not by direct taxes levied and collected in due course of law, nor by the issue of bonds, as would now be done, perhaps ; but by the combined labors of the men in the district, voluntarily given. On a given day, by appointment, all turned out with axes and teams, and from the contiguous woods cut the logs, hauled them to the site of Bissell's Corners, and within a few days had erected a log building about twenty by twenty-five feet in size. The gables were of logs and the roof of shakes, or boards, as they are sometimes called, rived with a frow from an oak tree, and held in place upon the roof by overlaying each course of the roofing with a heavy weight pole.
Openings were cut in the logs, at appropriate places, for the windows and door. At one end a wide fireplace, without jambs, capable of receiving wood six or seven feet in length, was provided. This fireplace was built of boulder stones, picked up in the neighborhood, and served as a foundation for a stick and mud chimney terminating above the roof. In this fireplace were piled large quantities of wood in winter, and the fires served well to heat the room. The door was of rough sawed boards, hung upon wooden hinges and held shut by a wooden latch. The windows, while supplied with sash for glazing, were, as the boy well remembers, only covered with greased paper at the first term of the school, taught in the summer of 1840. Floors of rough sawed lumber were laid. This building, each autumn during its service, had to be daubed with mud
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