History of Lorain County, Ohio, Part 58

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

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pants, giving as a reason that he was going to have a little frolic over in Vermillion. His frolic was his wedding. Among the earliest marriages was that of Ezekiel Goodrich and Charlotte Brown, on the lake shore. Some of the young men had arrangements east that they returned to consummate after they had "stuck their stakes." These were the earliest visits to the east. At a later day, the married people singly. not in pairs, went back to visit their old home, going by steamer to Buffalo, and by canal to Albany, aston- ished to traverse in ten days the road that it had taken seven weeks to pass over in coming into the wilderness. This going back to Stockbridge was a great event-the hope of the oldler, and the dream of the children. The young man, putting on his free- dom snit, must go to Stockbridge to give it an airing! and to attain the consequence essential to sustain his manhood. When he returned, his young companions gathered around him as a distinguished traveler, to hear all he could tell of the wonderful land. In this respect, the experience of children brought up in the simplicity of the new country can scarcely be repeated at the present day. The advantages of cultivated society, talked of by parents, but never seen by the children, made a powerful impression. The steepled church. back in the eastern home, wrought upon the imagination of the child, as it could not if an object of daily sight. The thought of the college, to one who had only seen the log schoot honse, was material for castle building by day, and for dreams by night. From mountain summit, and towering monument, and capital dome, in later years, my eyes have rested on many a goodly scene of nature and of art, but the thrill of surprise and satisfaction which I experi- enced upon my first view of the village of Elyria, from my father's wagon, has never been equated. The village at that time consisted of perhaps twenty buildings, gathered about the Ely and Beebe man- sions, at the cast end of Main street. No such sur- prise awaits the children of the present day.

One of the features of carly life here was familiar- ity with the wild animals that had possession of the country. The howl of the wolf at night, was as famihar as the whip-poor-will's song-not the small prairie wolf so well known at the west, but the pow- erful wolf of the forest, the black and the gray. They passed in droves by our dwellings at night, sometimes when the new comers had only a blanket suspended in the opening for the door ; sometimes they crowded upon the footsteps of a belated settler. passing from one part of the settlement to another. The boy crossing the pasture on a winter morning would often see the blind track of a wolf that had loped across the night before. If he had forgotten to bring in his sheep at evening, he might find them scattered and torn in the morning. A dog that ven- tured from the house at night, sometimes came in with wounds more honorable than comfortable. The wolf was a shy animal, seldom showing itself by day- light. Probably not one in a dozen of the early

inhabitants ever saw a wolf in the forest ; yet these animals roamed the woods around us for years. Mr. Solomon Whittlesey once snatched his calf from the jaws of a wolf, at night, with many pairs of hungry eyes gleaming upon him through the darkness.

In 1827, the county commissioners offered a bounty for wolf scalps-three dollars for a full-grown wolf, and half the sum for a whelp of three months. Whether any drafts were ever made upon the treasury does not appear. As late as 1832, my brother and myself, returning on foot to the high school at Elyria, after a visit home, were stopped on the way at even- ing by the howling of wolves in the road before us, and constrained to wait until morning. Now and then a wolf was taken in a trap or shot by a hunter. Probably less than a half-dozen were ever killed in the township. About the winter of 1827-28, wolf hunts were organized in the region on a grand scale, con- dueted by surrounding a tract of country several miles in extent, with a line of men within sight of each other at the start, and approaching each other as they moved toward the center. The first of these hunts centered in Henrietta, and resulted in bagging large quantities of game, but never a wolf. A single wolf made his appearance at the center, and was snapped at and shot at by many a rifle, but my recollection is that he got off with a whole skin. The sport involved danger from the cross-shooting as the line drew near the center, and Park Harris, of Amherst, mounted on a horse, received a shot in the ankle. To avoid this danger, the next hunt centered on the river hol- low, about the mill in Brownhelm, but the scale on which it was arranged was too grand to be carried out. The lines were too extended and broke in many places, resulting in gathering upon the flat a small herd of deer and a solitary fox, barely furnishing an occasion for the hundreds of huntsmen above to dis- charge their pieces, as the frightened animals escaped into the woods up the river. It was an utterly fruit- less chase. A more exciting chase was the slave-hunt of a later day. in which the people bewildered and foiled the kidnappers.

Bears were less numerous than wolves, but they were perhaps more often seen. One was shot by Sol- omon Whittlesey, from the ridge, a little east of the burying ground. One of the trials of my childish conrage, was to pass the tree against which tradition said that he rested his rifle in the shot. Another dangerous tree was the large basswood that leaned over the brook, a little to the south-east of Harvey Perry's orchard. My mother going over the ridge to bring a pail of water from the spring, once drove a large black animal before her, which she thought a dog, until he scrambled up that tree, when she re- turned home without the water. The tree stood close by the track that led to Mr. Peck's, and it was a test of phick for a child to pass that tree, as I was often obliged to, just as the evening began to darken. One day, one of the half dozen sheep that I was expected to drive into pen at night, was missing. They were

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HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

pastured in the field where the orchard now is. In looking for the lost animal, I found a place where it seemed to have been dragged over the fence, and fol- lowing the trail a few rods, I came upon a spot, not many feet from where we are now gathered, where a bear had made his feast, leaving the wool scattered about, and a few large bones, The tracks were still fresh in the mud. Such occurrences gave a smack of adventure to child life in the new country, and it was a matter of every day consultation among the boys, what were the habits of the various animals supposed to be dangerous, such as the wolf, the bear, the wild- cat, and the panther, and by what tactics it was safest to meet them. Similar discussions were had in refer- ence to the Indians, who had required a bad reputa- tion during the war, then recent, with England. The prevailing opinion was, that any fear exhibited towards an Indian, or a wild beast, put one at a great disadvantage.

Deer were far more plenty than cattle, and the sight of them was an everyday occurrence. A good marks- man would sometimes shoot one from his door. The same was true of wild turkeys. Raccoons worked mischief in the unripe corn, and a favorite sport of the boys was "coon hunting" at night, the time when the creature visited the eorn. A dog traversed the cornfield to start the game, and the boys ran at the first bark of the dog, to be in at the death. When the animal took to a tree, it was cut down, or a fire was built and a guard set to keep him until morning, when he was brought down by a shot. The motive for the hunt was three-fold,-the sport, the protection of the corn, and the value of the skin, the raccoon being a furred animal. The greatest speculation in this line of which the town can boast, was made by Job Smith, whom many will remember, and who is mentioned in the county records, in the description of a road, as " a man of some note." He is said to have bought a quantity of goods of a New York dealer, promising to pay "five hundred coon skins taken as they run," naturally meaning an average lot. The dealer, after waiting a reasonable time for his fur, came on to investigate, and inquired of his debtor when the skins would be delivered. "Why," said Mr. Smith, "you were to take them as they run; the woods are full of them; take them when you please." The moral of the story would not be complete with- out stating that the same Job Smith was afterwards arrested as a manufacturer of counterfeit coin.

Thrifty men pursued the business of hunting as a pastime. The only man in town, perhaps, to whom it afforded profitable business, in any sense, was Solo- mon Whittlesey. Other professional hunters were shiftless men, to whom hunting was a mere passion. having something of the attractions of gambling. Mr. Whittlesey did not neglect his farm, but he knew every haunt and path of the deer and the turkey. and Was often on their track by day and by night. He is with us to-day, and reports the killing of one bear, two wolves, twenty wild cats, about one hundred and

fifty deer, and smaller game too numerous to specify. One branch of his business was bee hunting, a pursuit which required a keen eye, good judgment and prac- tice. The method of the hunt was to raise an odor in the forest, by placing honey comb on a hot stone, and in the vicinity another piece of comb charged with honey. The bees were attracted by the smell, and having gorged themselves with the honey, they took a bee-line for their tree. This line the hunter observed and marked by two or more trees in range. Hle then took another station, not on this line, and went through the same operation. Those two lines, if fortunately selected, would converge upon the bee tree, and could be followed ont by a pocket compass. The tree, when found, was marked by the hunter with his initials, and could be cut down at the proper time.

Another form of the sport of hunting was even more classic, the hunting of the wild boar. For many years there was an unbroken forest, two miles in breadth, running through the township, between the North ridge and the lake shore farms. This forest became the haunt of fugitive hogs, that fed on the abundant mast, or, in Yankee phrase, "shack, " which the forest yielded. These animals were bred in the for- est, and in the third generation became as tierce as the wild boar of the European forest. The animal in this condition was about as worthless, for domestic pur- poses, as a wolf, as gaunt and as savage. Still it was customary, in the fall and early winter, to organize hunts for reclaiming some valuable animal that had become thus degenerate. The hunt was exciting and dangerous. The genuine wild boar, exasperated by dogs, was the most terrible creature in our forest. His onset was too sudden and headlong to be avoided or turned aside, and the snap of his tusks, as he sharpened them in his fury, was somewhat terrible. Two at least of our young men. Walter Crocker and Truman Tryon, were thrown down and badly rent in such encounters, and others had narrow escapes.

The principal fishing ground of the early years was the "flood wood" of the Vermillon. The lake fishing is a modern discovery. It was not known that the lake contained fish that were accessible. Other sports and recreations were few and simple, most of them presenting the utilitarian element. There were log- ging bees to help a man who had been sick or un- fortunate, raisings to put up a log cabin or barn, and militia trainings, which were entered into earnestly by men who had smelt powder in the recent war. Then there was an occasional patriot among us of the Revolution days who fired the youthful heart by tales of the times that tried men's souls. Chief among these was George Bacon, Sr., reported to have been one of the Boston tea party, who brought honor- able wounds from the battle field and drew his pen- sion from the government. Then there was Stephen James, with a bar sinister in his escutcheon, because he chanced to be of tory stock, still a true patriot, and a brave and stately man. It is not strange that

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HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

the Brownhelm Rifle Company should make a figure in the general musters of those times.

The Fourth of July was observed with sneb humble appointments as were at hand. An old musket that had been through the wars was the loudest piece that could be found, and this was brought into requisition. One Independence day, John Curtis, an ambitious youth, brought ont a cannon, which he had man- factured by boring a cylinder of oak and strapping it with iron bands from a wagon hub. The piece was well charged and placed on the bank of the river, near his father's, in the midst of a crowd of boys, and tired with a slow match. The report was satisfactory, but the splinters flew in all directions and the iron bands wore a total loss-they were never found. What was more important, no one was hurt. As the com- munity gained new ideas and advanced in civilization, these Fourth of July celebrations took on a philan- thropie character, and represented the interests of the Sabbath school and the temperance canse. For such a gathering, hell thirty-tive years ago to-day, the work on the first frame church was hastened forward to furnish a place for the meeting. One feature of the exercises brought out the Sabbath school. Each scholar and each teacher was provided with a passage of seripture, selected for the occasion, to be recited in order. It was in the days of President Jackson, who was especially obnoxious to true New Englanders. When AAlva Curtis was called on, he startled us with the petition, " Let his days be few, and let another take his office." Probably the whole congregation could say amen. for, as I remember, only three Jack- son votes were cast in the township.

If any one should infer that carly life here was more unsatisfactory or less desirable than life at the present time. it would be a misapprehension. There were ditliculties to be encountered. but they had their com- pensations. There was poverty to endure, but it was equally distributed, and was cheered with the hope of a good time coming, a poverty that stimulated to ae- tivity, and brought no degradation. There was want of many advantages which tend to the elevation and refinement of character; but such advantages had been enjoyed by the carly settlers in their New Eng- land homes, and the results would not be wholly lost before they gathered about themselves those desirable things. There was hard work to do, but it was well done: and such work with encouragement to do it, is the best opportunity. Few of those who bore the burden and heat of the day. ever regretted their call- ing: and most of them have lived to reap a good harvest. Few of the original families have reached this anniversary (July 4. 1867.) without sad breaches in their circle. This is incidental to our mortal hfe.

Another tifty years and not one will remain of all that gathered among these forests. Some of the fam- ilies, prominent in the early times, have now no living representative in the population of the place. Among these are the families of Judge Brown, Alva Curtis. William Alverson and the Peases. Most of the others

have still a posterity and a name among us. The town has sent out many worthy children to help build] up other communities, some to repeat, in a degree, the achievments of their parents, as pioneers at the west. The life encouraged here has been of a quiet, unambitions type, and the results in general corres- pond. We have no public men to speak of: no poli- tician seems to have sprung up among us; few to look for publie position or office. But these are not the characters the world most needs. We can gather a few ministers of the gospel, a few teachers, and many worthy and nseful people, and this is well.

There is a little shadow upon our prospeet as we look forward to fifty years to come. It is pleasant to believe that the places that are sacred to us with all pleasant memories, will be held by our children to an indefinite future. That another people shall come in to whom these farms, and streets, and dwellings are simply so much territory to be appropriated, the life that has passed here all unknown to them, is not an inviting prospect. Yet such is the prospect that opens to us to-day. Stranger eyes have looked upon these pleasant farms and will claim them for them- selves, in all honesty and honor, with such a elaim as an American citizen can never dispute, paying a fair price, and occupying them with a thrifty and snecess- ful culture. It is thirty years or more sinee the first German family obtained a footing here. Now the splendid old farms along the lake and all the northern part of the town, are in their possession. A similar change is taking place in the south, and the movement is towards the center. An entire change in the popu- lation of the town seems probable, and almost inevita- ble: a result which we object to, not in our reason, but in our feeling. Humanity loses nothing, nor even the country at large: but the sentiment of local inter- est which gathers us to-day. is less satisfied with the outlook. Fifty years hence, the faces, and the voices, and the names of strangers will be seen and heard at holiday gatherings and along these streets. The familiar names that seem to ns identified with the very face of nature, will be heard here no more forever.

God grant that these names be written in His "book of remembrance," securing a title to "'an inheritance incorruptible and undetiled, and that fadeth not away. eternal in the heavens."

AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS FOR 1828.

Wheat, 1,350 acres .22,011 bushels

Oats, 543 4 21.991

Corn,

1,128

75,057

Potatoes, 92 ..

9,325

Orchards, 347

16,656

Meadow, 1,370

1,715 tons.

Butter.

45,488 pounds.

Cheese ..

67,567 ..

Maple Sugar

369

VOTE FOR PRESIDENT IN 1876.

Hayes

165 | Tilden. .. 137

[The greater part of this history being that of President Fairchild, delivered in an address July 4, 1862, the reader will understand the meaning of certain phrases and sentences, if this fact is borne iu mind. ]

ToTHE Walls

Cartonne In Willy

Maria to Walk

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HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OUIIO.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

DEACON GEORGE WELLS

was born in the City of Hartford, Connecticut. Sep- tember 18, 1797, and is the second son of Ashbel Wells and Mary Hopkins, the former a son of Ashbel Wells, the latter a daughter of Thomas Hopkins, a prominent sea captain of his day: alt of English ancestry. The father of Deacon George Wells was a clerk in the commissary department of General Washington's army, during the Revolutionary war, and subsequently a well known and extensive mer- chant at Hartford. He died September 4, 1819, aged sixty-one years. lle was very generally respected, and his death looked upon as a public calamity, in the community in which he had been long engaged in business.

When seventeen years of age, George Wells left his native city, and came as far west as Albany, New York, obtaining employment there, at Little Falls, and at Utica, and finally located at Canandaigua, working at his trade, which was that of a shoemaker. He remained there abont one and a half years, and subsequently, on Jun 18, 1818, arrived at Brown- helm, Ohio, coming by way of the lake from Buffalo. Ile took up some fifty acres of land, on the lake shore. which he afterward increased to one hundred acres. Ilis time was occupied partly at farming, and partly at his trade. He built a log cabin, in which he lived nineteen years.

In 1837, he sold out, intending to move farther west, but finally purchased the place upon which he now resides, containing one hundred and twenty-five acres. He cleared and improved both farms.

Mr. Wells was married to Maria, daughter of Jonathan Butler, of Hartford, March 22, 1825. They had seven children,-four sons and three daughters. All the sons have departed this life. The youngest was killed at the battle of South Mountain, during the war of the rebellion. They all attained to man- hood. On the 28th of June, 1866, Mrs. Wells died. aged sixty-three years. The daughters all survive. Elizabeth G. married ,Joseph Sisson, of Hartford, who lost his life by a mowing machine accident; Mary M. married Benjamin F. Nye, who was killed at the bat- tle of the Wilderness; Abigail S. married Frederick IT. Bacon, and resides a short distance from her father's old home. Mr. Wells married again, Decem- ber 23, 1866, Mrs. Catherine M. Gardner. She has one daughter, Marie Antoinette, wife of Lyman Yerkes, of Detroit, Michigan.

For more than half a century. Deacon Wells has been a member of the Congregational church, of Brownhelm. His wife is also a member of the same church. In politics he is a republican, and has been for many years. Though now in his eighty-second year, his health, up to within the past three months,

has been remarkably good. Ile was always an active man, and last October, (1878,) he rode twice to Elyria and back. a distance of thirty miles. He is one of the very oldest pioneers of this township, as well as one of its most worthy citizens. (See illustration on another page).

SOLOMON WHITTLESEY.

One of the earliest and most prominent settlers of Brownhelm, was Solomon Whittlesey. We find him frequently mentioned in J. H. Fairchild's "History of Brownhelm." The exact date of his arrival is not given, but his name appears in connection with early religious matters in the year 1819. It is stated in the work above referred to that "The church was organized June 10, 1819, at the house of Solomon Whittlesey, and consisted of sixteen members, seven men and nine women." Again referring to Mr. Whittlesey, President Fairchild says : "Thrifty men pursued the business of hunting as a pastime. The only man in town, perhaps, to whom it afforded prof- itable business in any sense, was Solomon Whittlesey. Other professional hunters were shiftless men, to whom hunting was a mere passion, having something of the attraction of gambling. Mr. Whittlesey did not neglect his farm, but he knew every haunt and path of the deer and the turkey, and was often in their track by day and by night. He is with us to-day, (1867) and reports the killing of one bear, two wolves, twenty wild cats, almost one hundred and fifty deer, and smaller game too numerous to specify. One branch of his business was bee hunting, a pursuit which required a keen eye, good judgment and practice. The method of the hunt was to raise an odor in the forest, by placing honey comb on a hot stone, and in the vicinity another piece of comb charged with honey. The bees were attracted by the smell, and having gorged themselves with the honey, they took a bee line for their tree. This line the hun- ter observed and marked by two or more trees in range. Ile then took another station, not on this line, and went through the same operation. These .two lines, if fortunately selected, would converge upon the bee tree, and could be followed ont by a pocket compass. The tree, when found, was marked by the hunter with his initials, and could be cut down by him, at the proper time." Mr. Whittlesey is also accredited with having been among the first in Brown- helm township to manufacture pearl-ash, which he did qnite extensively. He seems to have been one of the most industrious and energetic of the pioneers, and a worthy man in every respect. He died Febru- ary 22, 1871, aged eighty-four years, nine months and twenty-two days; his excellent widow survived him about two years, she departing this life on the 26th of April, 1823, aged seventy-one years, one month and three days.

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HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.

WILLIAM SAYLES

was born at Milan, Erie county, Ohio, June 5, 1821, and was the sixth child in a family of eight children of Lemuel Sayles, who was born March 8, 1783, and Laura Adams, who was born February 4, 1789, she being a native of Utica, New York. The subject of this sketch started out in hfe at the age of fourteen, sustaining the loss of his excellent mother at a tender age. During the winter months he attended school, and by being industrions and indefatigable in the pursuit of knowledge, he became quite proficient in the English branches, and followed school teaching as an avocation, commencing in the winter of 1839- 40, at New London Center, Huron county, Ohio, and continued for nineteen conseentive winters, all but the first one, in the vicinity of his present home. He made his first purchase of land, consisting of fifty aeres, in the year 1845, in Vermillion township. Ile bought his present farm of one hundred acres in the spring of 1851, and has since added some adjoining land to it.

Mr. Sayles was united in marriage with Sarah C., daughter of Perry and Elizabeth Darley, July 3, 1843. She was from Frederickstown, Maryland. She died May 6, 1876, regretted by her friends, and deeply mourned by her relatives. . She joined the Congrega- tional Church of Vermillion, in 1845, and her con- nection with that body ceased only with her life. Iler husband became a member of the church at the same time, and still retains his connection with it. For his second wife, Mr. Sayles married Lovina E., daughter of John and Elizabeth Gordon, of Pankling county, Ohio, in September, 1877, who is still living.

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History of Lorain County, Ohio, Part 58

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

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