History of Lorain County, Ohio, Part 56

Author:
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 626

USA > Ohio > Lorain County > History of Lorain County, 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).

It is difficult for the young people of this day lo appreciate the conditions of living in the new settle- ment. We need to recall the fact that northern Ohio, fifty years ago, was farther from the appliances of civ- ilization than any portion of North America reckoned habitable, is to-day. The canal through the State of New York was not in existence, had scarcely been dreamed of. Western New York itself was mostly a howling wilderness. The articles needed in the new country could not be brought from the far east except at ruinous cost, and for the produce of the new country the only market was that made by the wants of the occasional new families that joined the settlement. These generally brought a little money, which was soon divided among their neighbors. The families in general came well furnished with clothing, after the New England fashion ; but a year or two of wear and tear in the woods, sadly reduced the store. The children did not stop growing in the woods, nor in those days did they cease to multiply and replenish the earth. The outgrown garments of the older children might serve for the younger, but where were the new garments for these older children to grow into ? Flax could be raised, and summer linen of tow, and bleached linen, and copperas stripe, could be manufactured, when hands and health could be found to do it. Every woman was a spinner, but only here and there was a weaver, and each family had to come in for its turn. The old garments often grew shabby before the piece which was to furnish the summer wear of the family could be put through the loom. In autumn the difficulty was increased. The mate- rial for winter clothing could not be extemporized in the new country. Sheep came in slowly. At first they were not safe from wolves, and afterwards the new lands proved unwholesome to them, and they died, often suddenly, without visible cause. But when wool could not be obtained, the process of man-

Solomon of thettlsg

RES. OF SOLOMON WHITTLESEY ->1824 .<-

RESIDENCE OF CYRUS L.WHITTLESEY, BROWNHELM TP, LORAIN CO., O.

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

ufacture was slow and the time uncertain. The spin- ning was a matter that could be managed : the weaving involved uncertainty, and then the web must be sent to the eloth-dresser and bide its time. It might come home long after thanksgiving, long after winter school began. Thus an unreasonable demand was made upon the summer clothing, a demand which it could bnt poorly answer. It was not rare to see a boy at school with his summer pants drawn over the remnants of his last winter's wear, a combination which provided both for warmth and decency. Some families dispensed altogether with the clothier's ser- vices, and by the aid of a butternut dye gave their cloth a home dressing, avoiding the loss of time and the loss of surface by shrinkage-both important elements in the solution of the problem of clothing the boys. The undressed cloth was indeed rather light for winter, especially when the extravagance of underelothing, or of overcoats for the boys was never dreamed of ; but it was very much better than none.

The various devices for making elothing serve its purpose as long as possible, were in use, and some inger ions ones, unknown at the present day. Pant- aloons were given a longer lease of life by facing the exposed portions with home-dressed deerskin. This served an admirable purpose, as long as there was enough of the original garment left to supply a skel- eton: but at length the whole fabric would break down together, like the " wonderful one horse shay." Garments made wholly of buckskin were sometimes attempted, but after a single wetting and drying, they were as uncomfortable as if made of sheet iron. Leather was scarce, and shoes as a consequence. Here and there was a tannery, after a year or two; but where were the hides? Cattle were scarce, and too valuable to be sacrificed for sneh small comforts as shoes and, tallow candles, and fresh beef. If some disease had not ap- peared among them, now and then, the case would have been still worse. But in those simple times, a hide could not be tanned in a day. After long months the leather came, but shoemakers, proverb- ially slow, were indefinitely slower, when their out door work absorbed their energies, and they resorted to the bench only for spare evenings and rainy days. The boy must go for his shoes a half score of times, and return with a promise for next week. The snow often eame before the shoes, and then the shoes them- selves would be a curiosity. - made as they were indis- criminately from the skins of the hog, the dog, the deer, and the wolf. I remember to have worn all these myself.

Sometimes when the household store of clothing seemed nearly exhausted, and every garment had served its generation in a half dozen different forms, a box would come from the east, brought by some family moving into the new country, well charged with half worn garments and new cloth. and a stray string of dried apples to till ont a corner, enough to make glad the hearts of the recipients for a year.

" Mother says we are rich now." said three little boys to a neighbor's children, whom they met in the road, after the arrival of a box from Stockbridge. " Well," was the reply, "we are not rich, we are poor, and poor folks go to heaven, and rich folks don't." This was a new view of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and the boys went home quite crest-fallen.

It relieved this experience of poverty that all shared in it. Many of our wants are merely relative. We need good things because our neighbors have them. But in those days, there were few contrasts to disturb even the poorest. Still, without any reference to others, there is some slight discomfort to a boy in calling at a neighbor's house in such a plight that he cannot safely turn his back to the people as he leaves the house; or in crossing the meadow on a frosty morning with bare feet, stopping now and then to warm them on a stone not so cold as the grass.

In the matter of necessary food, the new country was more generous. The soil yielded abundantly when once bronght under cultivation, furnishing the substantials of life. The material of bread was abund- ant, but in a dry season, the wheat could not be ground. Brown's mill, on the Vermillion, was the first to fail; then Shupe's, on Beaver creek, or Starr's, at Birmingham, and last, Ely's, at Elyria. The grists were ground in the order of their reception, and some- times a family was obliged to wait weeks forits turn, as the water was sufficient only for an hour's work in a day; and sometimes the mill rested for days in succession. Then it was no small enterprise to go to Elyria to mill. There was a time within my own recollection, when there were not a half dozen horses in town. Mr. Peck had a span, Mr. Bacon one, and Judge Brown a span. These horses were freely lent, but they could not meet the requirements of the entire settlement, when the mill was a dozen miles away. and still be of any use to their owners. When one went to mill with a team, he was expected to carry the grists of his neighbors, or bring them home, if he found them ground. When the mills were at rest, it was allowable to borrow as long as there was any four in the neighborhood, and when it failed, we enjoyed a week's variety of .. jointed corn, " or pounded wheat. There was a little peril to young hands in this work of " jointing " corn, and many a thumb, fifty years old or less, bears marks as mysterious to the children of this day, as the fossil bird tracks of the Connecticut sand stone.

Pork was the stapie article in flesh diet, an ox or a cow being too valuable to slaughter. For flesh meat we had venison and other wild game,-so plenty at times as to become a drug. In the view of those who lived here in the carly days, such meats are likely to be regarded as fancy adornments of a bill of fare, not satisfactory as an every day reliance. When an orig- inal Brownhelmer goes to the city, he is not likely to call for venison, unless to recall the early experience, as the people of Israel used unleavened bread and

224

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

bitter herbs at the passover. He has done his duty in that line of cating. Roasted raccoon and baked opos- sum were never popular. Those may enjoy who have never tasted.

Onr supply of fruits was not abundant. Three years sutieed to bring the peach into bearing from the stone; hence, this was the earliest cultivated fruit. And we had peaches in those times. The diseases and insects that ruin the peach tree were then ni- known. A wagon load of the finest peaches could be had for the gathering. Peach cider was attempted in various parts of the town, before the advent of tecto- talism, but the cause of temperance never suffered from it. Apples and pears came on very slowly. The plan of grafting was not much in use, and the virgin soil which stimulated the growth of wood, was not favorable to carly fruitage. I remember that I was called from bed one morning to see an apple tree in blossom, the first ! ever saw. In the thought of the children of that time, the forbidden fruit of Eden was an apple. Nothing else could be such a tempta- tion. Now and then a stray apple reached us from the orchard of Horatio Perry, or of Judge Ruggles in Vermillion. And what a flavor there was in that. slice from a pippin, brought by Mr. Alverson, all the way from Stockbridge, in his knapsack! We have no apples now-a-days! The first pear that the boy tasted he was not allowed to see. He was told to shut his eyes and open his month, and a bit of the delicious mystery was placed upon his tongue.

Sugar could be obtained from the maple then, as now, but the maple tree was not abundant in the township. Many farms were entirely destitute of it, and few families made sugar enough for the year's supply. It was not a rare thing for a family to be without sugar for months in snecession. Honey and pumpkin molasses were used as substitutes for sweet- ening tea and making gingerbread, -not quite equal to refined sugar; but they served to keep alive the idea of sweetness.

Genuine tea, -old or young hyson. - was regarded as a necessary of life, and no well conditioned family could be found without it: but it would astonish a modern housekeeper to hear how small a quantity would meet the necessity. Children never needed it: it was not good for them: and a pound would supply a family for a year. Tea must have been a different thing in those times. A single teaspoon- ful. well steeped, would furnish sociability to a half dozen ladies of an afternoon; and the same pot, retitled with water. would charm away the weariness of the men folks, when they returnad from their work. A cargo of such tea. in these days, would make the fortune of the importer. Store coffee was essentially unknown, and therefore not needed.

The table furniture was simple, and the frugal habits of New England on this point, favored the condition of the people. The food was placed in a common dish in the middle of the table, the potato mashed and seasoned to the taste, and the meat cut

in mouthfuls ready for appropriation. A knife and fork at each place sufficed, or even one of them would do for the children. A drinking-enp or tumbler at each end of the table was ample. If bread and milk was the bill of fare, a single bowl and spoon could do duty for the entire family, going down from the oldest to the youngest. This may seem like imagination- it is simple fact. Commonly a tin basin or pewter porringer went around among the younger children : but as they grew older they preferred to wait, for the sake of using the crockery warc.

In those dark-walled log cabins, a single tallow candle would not seem so afford superfluous light of a winler evening ; but only favored families could indulge the luxury. The candle was lighted when visitors came. At other times the bright wood fire was the chief reliance, and for sewing or reading a nieked tea saueer lilled with hog's fat, and a wiek of twisted rag projecting over the edge. This was the classic lamp of the log cabin, open to accident indeed, but a dash of grease on the puncheon floor was an immaterial circumstance. Two dipped can- dles furnished the light for an evening meeting. the hour for which was very properly designated as "early candle lighting." The out door life of the early settlers presented some peculiar features. The chief item of farm work was clearing land. The first, and in some respects the most valuable products of this labor, was derived from the ashes of the burnt forests. Black salts, or potash, concentrated much valne in a small bulk ; and hence would bear Irans- portation to a distant market. For years it was the only article of farm produce which would bring money. Some trader at the mouth of Black river, or at Elyria, would pay one-third cash for this article, and the balance in goods. Thus the farmer could raise the money to pay his taxes, and a little more for tea and cotton cloth, which were always cash articles. Wheat and corn would not sell for cash, except occa- sionally a little to an immigrant, until about the time of the completion of the Erie canal. It was the height of prosperity when at length white flint corn came to sell at eighteen cents a bushel, and white army beans at thirty to fifty cents. From that day we were " out of the woods."

The appliances for farm culture were not the most efficient. Horses and wagons came slowly. Oxen and carts, however, furnished a very good substitute, indeed. were best suited to the work in the midst of logs and stumps. They were not so convenient for trips to mill, or to market, or to meeting ; but they were made to answer all these purposes. Indeed, a single ox, titly harnessed, was sometimes made to do duty as a horse in plowing corn. The plow of these times was such as each farmer possessing a little mechanical gumption, could make for himself. The share, as it was called by courtesy, was brought from the east, made of wrought iron and pointed with steel. The mould-board was split from an oak log and hewed into a slightly spiral form, and the whole

WILLIAM SAYLES.

Photos. by Lee, Elyria, O.

MRS. WILLIAM SAYLES.

MRS. SARAH C. SAYLES.

TENANT HOUSE.

RESIDENCE OF WM SAYLES BROWNHFIM TP INRAIN CON

225

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OIIIO.

was bound together by a bolt which extended from a block at the base up through the beam. The clear, shining furrow of the modern plowman could not follow such an implement. I remember well the sen- sation produced by the first cast-iron plow brought into the country. People came miles to see it. The only drawback was that when the point failed, it could be replaced only by sending to Massachusetts, except that the proprietor chanced to be enough of a Yankee to whittle out a mould for himself, and thus obtained a perpetual supply from a furnace at Elyria.

Mechanics and artisans appeared slowly. All the energies of the people were concentrated upon clear- ing the land, and they had no surplus means to support mechanics who should supply them with the refinements of life. Shoemakers were first called for. and some men found themselves shoemakers who had never been suspected, either by their friends or them- selves, of any acquaintance with the art. Among the first who were recognized as accomplished artists in this line, were Mr. Peck and his sons, Mr. Scott near the stone quarry, Mr. Wells on the lake, and after- ward Mr. Hosford and his sons. Mr. Peck estab- lished a tannery, and could thus perform the whole labor of transforming into shoes the few hides which the murrain furnished to a reluctant community. The shoemaker often went from house to house, making shoes for the entire family, an operation that was called " whipping the cat."

The first blacksmith in town, and the only one for many years, was Deacon Shepard. A farmer like the rest, he spent his mornings and evenings and rainy days at his anvil. Such double service would seem too much for ordinary endurance; but the deacon still walks among the people whom he thus served, able, in his eighty-third year, to do a good day's work. Seth Morse made rakes, scythe snaths and farm cra- dles. Mr. Blodgett manufactured our brooms, and Solomon Whittlesey converted the farmer's black salts into pearlash. Alfred Avery was a wheelwright, and of course a carpenter, more strictly devoted to his trade than most of the first mechanics. Thomas Sty. on the lake shore, was a carpenter, and his son James after him; on the south ridge, Durand and Hancock. Many of the farmers had sufficient skill in the work- ing of wood to construct their plows, sleds, ox-yokes and ordinary farming implements, and to put an axle into a cart or wagon. Ezekiel Goodrich, on the lake shore, was the first cabinet maker. There was no brick or stone mason in the early settlement. The only work in that line was the building of stick chim- neys, and now and then one of stone and brick, and pointing the crevices of the log cabins every winter with clay-even the boys learned to do this. Such extempore mason-work was not always reliable. The stone chimney in the house built for Dr. Betts buried Mr. Pease in its ruins one day, when he was engaged laying the hearth. He was bruised, not killed.

The first tlouring-mill was built by Judge Brown, in 18221, on the Vermillion, near the present Swift

place. After two or three years, it was removed down the river and placed by the side of a saw mill, owned by Hinckley and Morse, and is the same mill now owned by Benjamin Bacon-the same perhaps in the sense that the boy's knife was the same after having a new blade and a new handle. Its original infirmity was want of motive power in a dry time, a weakness from which it has never fully recovered-the failure of the dam in a wet time, and the freezing up of the wheel in winter.

There is now-fall of 1878-one grist mill in the township. This is the mill of John H. Heyman, called the "Brownhehn Mills," situated in West Brownhelm, on the Vermillion. The mill was erected by the present owner, in the fall of 1847, at a cost of some fifteen thousand dollars. There are three run of stones, beside a middlings stone. The mill is usually run by water power, but an engine has been added for use in dry seasons. The new process, called the "steaming process," is adopted in the manufac- ture of flour, which consists simply of steaming the wheat about six hours before grinding. About three hundred barrels of flour are now shipped per week, the principal market for which is Cleveland. It is one of the best establishments of the kind in this section of country. Mr. Heyman also has, in con- nection with his grist mill, a saw mill, run by the same motive power.

The first carding and cloth-dressing establishment was built by Uriah Ilawley and Charles Whittlesey, on the Vermillion, but a little southwest of Brown- helm territory. The first hotel in town was kept by Alva Curtis, first in his log house, afterwards in a more stately structure. It was always a pleasant. home for a traveler. The sign itself gave notice that Sunday calls were not desired. Travelers were also entertained, for a consideration, at any house at which they felt inclined to stop.

Mr. Curtis brought the first stock of goods into the town, and opened a store. His assortment was not extensive, but I remember buying there, one day, a clay tobacco pipe-a present for Aunt Patty Andrews, whose favor was very valuable to all boys who loved kindly words and doughnuts-and an illustrated edi- tion of "Cock Robin" for myself. Stores were after- wards opened at Black River, Elyria, South Amherst, North Amherst, and, in 1830, one by Ezekiel Good- rich, on the lake shore in Brownhelm, afterwards removed to the ridge road, near Mr. Curtis'.

The stores in town at the present time are the fol- lowing: F. M. McGregor, Sunshine and Stevenson in West Brownhelm; W. H. Cooley, at Bacon's Cor- ners; Gibson Brothers, J. Clark, at the station, and Chauncey Peck on Middle ridge.

EDUCATIONAL.

The first school in town was opened by Mrs. Alver- son, in her own house, in the summer of 1819. In the antumn of the same year, the first school house was built, of logs of course, on the brow of the hill

22G

HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

just west of Dr. Perry's. The old butternut tree, which still survives, stood near the door. The site was romantic, but it was apparently selected to give the teachers the opportunity of forbidding sliding down hill and wading in the brook. The house was of modest dimensions, eighteen by twenty-two, but was still thought hy some to indicate too ambitious a disposition on the part of the people who lived on this road. Hence the street was nicknamed "Street street" by a man who would have the house twelve feet square-a title it bore for many years.

This school house was finished with a stick chim- ney, and a broad fireplace without jambs. A board around the house, resting on pins projecting from the walls, served for desks; and whitewood slabs, sup- ported by pins, made the seats. Loose boards lying on joists made a loft above, and an excavation beneath the floor, reached by raising a board, served as a dun- geon for the punishment of offenders. In our childish simplicity, we supposed the excavation was made for the purpose, with malice prepense, but I have since ascertained that it was an accidental result of making mortar to build the chimney.

My father taught the school the first two winters, and children from every part of the town attended. There was no public school fund in those times, and the teacher received his compensation in work in his "chopping" the next spring, day for day, the work being distributed among the families according to the number of children attending the school. For years afterwards the teacher received his pay in farm pro- duce. Among the earlier teachers in that house were Abby Harris, Amelia Peck and Pamelia Curtis. Miss Pamelia herself was but a child, thirteen years of age: and, although she sustained her responsibilities with remarkable dignity, it is not difficult to recall, in a retrospect, some childish arrangements. One sum- mer day she placed her chair on the table, removed a board from the floor above, lifted the children up one by one, and kept school up stairs-the exense being that Colonel Brown's bull had been seen loose around the street that day, and he might be wild-an ample reason in the imagination of both teacher and chil- dren. Many pleasant memories gather about the old school house, in spite of the striped lizards that bur- roughed in its crevices to frighten nervous girls, and the yawning chasm below, in which heedless hwys were often engulfed.

In 1824 the "yellow school house" was built,a few feet west of the log one, and the boys had the exquisite pleasure of rolling the old house down the hill. This yellow school honse was an elegant one in its day, painted throughout and plastered. It was no ordi- nary school house, but a genuine academy, furnished with unnsnal apparatus, globes, and wall maps, and pantograph, and tables for map-drawing and painting, all under the charge of accomplished teachers. This was the first attempt in the county, and indeed in a much wider region, at a school of anything more than a local character. The enterprise originated with,

and was carried forward almost wholly by Dr. Betts. It prospered for two or three years, attracting young ladies in the summer from all the older settlements, within a distance of twenty miles; from Milan, Nor- walk, Florence, Elyria, Shetfield, etc. Mary Harris of Florence, afterward Mrs. Hopkins of Milan, taught the school the first two summers; after her, Mary Green, now Mrs. Miles of Elyria. The first winter Mortimer Strong, and the second and third Mr. Park- hurst, were the teachers, The first summer the house was without tire. In cool, wet weather the boys kept up an out-door fire; and between the damp plastering within, and the rain without, some of the children took the agne and shook the summer through. in the fall a stove was bought, probably the first that was ever brought into town, a diminutive box stove, eighteen inehes in length, but a wonder to the chil- dren of the woods, who had never seen a stove. Over that we shivered two or three winters, when it was succeeded by a larger stove cast in plates, but utterly destitute of clamping rods to hold it together. No man in the community knew that such a thing was necessary, and it was no rare oceurrence for a long stiek to thrust out the end plate, and occasionally the whole fabric collapsed at once. But such annoyances were but trifles, and the Brownhelm school main- tained a character above that of other schools in the country around. Among the earlier teachers, besides those mentioned, were J. A. Harris now of Cleveland; his sister, Miss Emeline Harris, now Mrs. Tenney; Miss Mary Whittlesey, and John Curtis. There was no other school in town the first dozen years or more. After three or four years it ceased to be anything but a local school. The old yellow school house went off in a blaze some years ago.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Lorain County, Ohio, Part 56

Author: Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Philadelphia, Williams brothers Number of Pages: 626

Author:
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Philadelphia, Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 626