USA > Ohio > Lorain County > History of Lorain County, Ohio > Part 9
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In the peopling of the Lorain woods, no state. nor powerful corporation, no strong combination of indi- viduals had any hand. Few persons of wealth took any personal part in it. No weil constructed highway led from the old to the new, with convenient resting places. No common starting place, and no common point of arrival and settlement, where supplies were gathered, and around and from which the new homes would be built. A hundred different points, remote from each other, were ocenpied at the same time. and the sufferings, privations and hardships of the first settler were repeated a thousand times, when by care and tact they might have been avoided.
The silence of the Lorain forests remained nnbroken a few years longer than some of her neighboring re- gions. The incidents of their first occupation will be detailed, under the names of the different townships; only a slight general reference can here be made to them. As a general rule, the pioneers were men of conrage and enterprise. Few others would have the hardihood to run the risk, and take upon themselves the labor and privation incident to a removal into the woods.
It is said that the Moravians were the first, of European blood, who attempted to make a permanent lodgment on the soil of Lorain, and that in 1782, they gathered a small band of christian Indians at the mouth of Black river, where they intended to establish a mission for the conversion of the natives, but were compelled to depart by the mandate of a chief, who claimed jurisdiction of that region.
One of the first efforts of a settlement, if such it may be called, was in 1807, by Nathan Perry, who established a trading post at the mouth of the same river. Actual clearers of the woods, and cultivators of the soil, first planted themselves at that point in 1810. They were said to have been natives of Ver- mont. This position was on the lake coast region, and quite central in the present county.
In the autumn of 1807, a strong and seemingly well considered attempt was made to colonize the present township of Columbia, the most eastern of Lorain. from Waterbury, Connecticut. The more prominent men were the three Hoadleys. Williams, Warner, and Bronson, most of whom had families; also. Mrs. Parker and five children. It is said the party were two months in reaching Buffalo, and undertook to navigate Lake Erie, which must have been extra hazardous at that season. They seem to have been wrecked near the present city of Erie, whence they
40
IHISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
made their way on foot to Cleveland .- one of the most disastrous of the early attempts to reach the then west. Most of the party spent the residue of the winter in Cleveland. Other immigrants reached Columbia during the winter, and the ensuing season.
Ridgeville also received her first. pioneers from Connecticut in 1810, and Amherst her first about. the same time. Eaton was also first settled from Waterbury, Connectient, in 1810.
Three of these points of occupation formed a sort of triangle, not remote from each other, in the eastern central portions of the county, while Black River and Amherst were quite distant to the northwest. The five seem to have been the only settlements in the county, until after the dark days of the war of 1812, although some of them seem to have made accessions during that gloomy period.
Sheffield, adjoining Black River on the east, received her first settlers in 1815, from Massachusetts. They came on strong-handed.
Avon, still east of Sheffield, was settled in 1814.
Brownhelm, west of Black River, and Grafton, adjoining Eaton, on the south, were settled in 1816. as was Elyria. the future county seat, and all three from Massachusetts. Elyria was most fortunate in being selected as the home of the Elys.
Wellington and Huntington, in the southwesterly part, received their first settlers in 1818, and both Trom Massachusetts.
Carlisle, south of Elyria and west of Eaton, was first occupied in 1819. from Connectient, and Brighton, adjoining Wellington on the west, in 1820. Russia's first settler came from New York in 1818. Penfield, adjoining Wellington on the east, in 1819, while llen- rietta was settled in 1817. The other townships, many of them, were first occupied in the years soon following these older sisters.
These pioneers were of one origin, language, re- ligion, with political and patriotic sentiments mainly identical with a common history and the same tradi- tions. They were of the intelligent working class. having community of purpose, which they pursued by the same methods, and in the same field, with results not widely dissimilar. The journey, arrival, building, mode of life, fortune and career, of almost any one of these, resolute, vigorous, thrifty down- east families, was the counterpart of the histories of all the others.
"The leading incidents of these will more properly be mentioned elsewhere. . This slight reference to the periods of the first settlements of the older townships and the mention of their origin is merely to show that they were quite contemporaneous, and made by a perfectly homogeneous people and under similar conditions.
The man of our old civilization is astonished at the enumeration of his wants, and perhaps still more at the small number absolutely essential to the comforta- ble maintenance of human life, with all of its real en- joyments. A removal into the depths of the Ohio
woods, where a man was directly placed face to face with primitive conditions, brought him at once to the practical contemplation of the problem, and the solu- tion was in his own hands: Food, shelter, raiment. Here was the earth, whose soil was to furnish bread and clothing, but it was covered with a thick growth of great trees to be removed ere it could be planted. Their trunks and barks must be converted into houses. The last was the first to be extemporized. A temporary supply of food, was carried by the immigrant with him. On making his way to his purchase he pursued the trail that led nearest to it. and, with his axe, opened the rest of the way. The point gained, the same implement with which a savage continent has been hewn into the rough forms of civilization, cuts down and prepares the tree trunks for the first cabin, which the hands of the whole party, women and children as well, help to place in the low, rude walls of the primi- tive structure, while the bark of the baswood and elm make the cover. Doorless, floorless, windowless, chim- neyless, the pioneer. eagerly takes possession of his cheerless cabin. Thousands of them within these seventy years were built and occupied in the Lorain woods. Men and women lived in them; children-all the elders of the new generation-were born in them. Death came to them there; and there young women became brides and dwelt there-the happy wives of happy husbands. Of all these dwellings in the woods, scarcely the site of one can now be identified. The forest was at once the great foe and benefactor of the new dwellers in its midst. A war of exter- mination began on the trees. The axe and fire were the agents of their swift destruction, and rapidly the small ring of trees about the cabin en- larged, and the growing, stumpy fields, marked the progress of the struggle. Next to the ereetion of their own cabin, the most important event was the arrival of another family in the woods, and the erec- tion of their dwelling received the joyous help of every male within ten miles of it. No one born of later years can comprehend the strength and warmth of the bands of sympathy and fellowship which united the first dwellers in the woods in wide neighborhood!
What an event was the erection of the first saw- mill! The first grist mill! The setting up of the first blacksmith's forge! The advent of the first shoe- maker! The purchase of the first cows and sheep! The acquisition of the first cat, dog and hens! The coming of a spinning-wheel in a family and the setting up of a hand loom in a neighborhood were events. The raw material for all fabrics were won from the earth. Men raised flax, rotted, broke and swingled it. Women hatcheled, spun, wove and made it into garments. Wool, shorn from the sheep, was turned into cloth, dyed with bark, and the first fretting mill was a benefaction. Then came earding machines. Many men became apt and skillful hunters, and the pelts of elk and deer were changed by domestic tanners to material for clothing. A great drawback was the scarcity of necessary implements for the household,
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HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
and for the outside war on the savagery of nature- rudely extemporized chairs, stools and boxes, gourds, shells, sap-troughs, wooden trays and trenchers; poor axes, rude hoes, imperfect seythes, sickles, hand flails. and fans, and wooden plows. Money there was none. and yet money had to be paid for taxes, for leather, and usually for salt. But one product could be ex- changed for money. The field and house ashes were carefully saved, rude boiling asheries extemporized, and erude, black salts manufactured which in remote Pittsburgh commanded money.
Not the least of the enemies encountered by the pioneers, were the predaceous will animals. The bears made war on the swine, considerable flocks of sheep were often devoured by wolves, and the good wives' poultry found many enemies, while the ripen- ing crops were the spoil of animals and birds of all sorts.
The ill condition of their dwellings, the seanty supply of warm clothing, the sometimes lack of food, the general hardship and exposure of their mode of life and labor, the endlessness of that toil, with the constant care and anxiety of the elders of the family. amid the unknown perils of the climate, and diseases incident to pioneer life, rendered the settlers liable to become the victims of sickness, often fatal. More than one epidemie, more malignant than any known to later times, visited the pioneers, and which, in the absence of skilled medical assistance, was left to work its fatal will, often aggravated by the attendance of quacks, who find shelter and victims on the skirts of civilization.
The presence with us, or the memory, of the few pioneers who have reached remarkable age, should not be taken as conchisive that such life is conducive to great length of years. Whoever will consult the tombstones of the pioneers. - men, women and chil- ren .- will. I think, be struck by the average short- ness of their lives.
Living on the borders of older States and commu- nities, their lives were marked by sharp vicissitudes and well defined and peculiar features. Often the victims of the common human vices and weaknesses, the nobler humane and social virtues were developed among them in a degree never found in well estab- lished states of human association. If there was less of what is now called culture, and conventional polish; and refinement, there was an hundred fold more warmth, spontaneous charity, abounding and widely extended sympathy, friendliness, and good neighbor- hood. Men and women were then spontaneously capable of self devoted, heroic and even great actions.
In the nature of things, pioneer life in the northern Ohio woods, with its habits, manners and customs, was necessarily transitory. The sons and daughters of advanced civilization, bearing all its most precious elements, seeds and principles with them, rushed into the forest, and planted them in the stimulating soil of the west, resolved themselves into the primitive constitutions of human society, only to guard and
cherish the new growths the more certainly. And now. in seventy years, their descendants are in advance of the kindred who remain in the old seats from which they all sprung, retaining something of the warmth, much of the elevation of character, many features of the broader and freer natures and lives. developed in their pioneer fathers and mothers, by their sojourn in the wilderness. These are clear gains to the race of man, above and beyond the natural wealth wrought out and transmitted by their hands. They gave us a broader, deeper and wider system of education, freer and more catholic christian institu- tions, lived their hard, patient, toilsome lives of fidelity and devotion, and dropped by the wayside. many of them, early, unmentioned, with their worn. patient, unwearied wives, and were buried in the shadow of the near woods; while many more favored, or hardy, endured to near our day, honored and cherished.
Of the real pioneer, the fellers of the first trees, not. one remains:
"Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet slep." * *
"Oft' did the harvest to their sickles yield, Their furrows oft' the stubborn glehe has broke, How joeund did they drive their teams afield, low bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke."
Their fields, their memories, their graves alone remain to us.
CHAPTER X. CIVIL ORGANIZATION.
On the 9th of July, 1:88, Governor St. Clair, the newly appointed governor, arrived at Marietta, and, with the help of the judges and secretary, proceeded to organize the northwestern territory. Congress had appointed Winthrop Sargent, secretary, and Samuel Holden Parsons and John Cleves Symmes as judges. The district embraced was a vast one, including all the country lying northwest of the Ohio as far west as the Mississippi. The laws adopted for the govern- mental needs of the territory were those provided in the celebrated ordinance of 1787, which has been fitly described as having been " a pillar of cloud by day. and of fire by night," in the settlement and govern- ment of the northwestern States.
In 1288 the county of Washington was organized by proclamation of the governor and judges. It in- cluded that part of the Western Reserve cast of the Cuyahoga river. the old Portage path, and the Tnsca- rawas river. In the year 1495, Wayne county was established, including, with other territory of vast
extent, the remainder of the Reserve not embraced in Washington county. In 1997, Jefferson county was organized, and its boundaries were such as to include all of the Western Reserve east of the Cuyahoga.
Notwithstanding the inclusion of the soil of the Reserve, by act of the territorial government, within the limits of these several counties, civil government
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THISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
was not of binding force upon the inhabitants of New Connecticut until the year 1800. Prior to this date, Connectient and the Connectiont Land Company de- nied to the United States the right of jurisdiction over the soil of the Reserve, and refused obedience to the laws of the territorial government. (The reasons for this course are given in a former chapter of this work. ) Thus it happened that, from 1496-97, the time the first, settlers arrived, until May 30, 1800, the pioneers of the Reserve were without municipal laws. Their condnet was regulated and restrained, and their duties were prescribed. solely by their New England sense of justice and right. There was no law governing the descent and conveyance of real property, or of the transfer of personal goods: there were no regulations for the redress of wrongs or for the protection of private rights. They were literally a law unto them- selves. Happily but few cases of misdemeanor arose; but if a settler was guilty of theft, or if he misused his wife, his neighbors constituted a court of justice. and decided what punishment should be inflicted. The offender's back generally furnished the only record of these judicial proceedings.
On the 10th day of July, 1800, the general govern- ment having ceded to Connectient her claim to the soil of the Reserve, and Connectient on her part having transferred to the general government all right. of jurisdiction within the limits of New Connectient. the Western Reserve was erected into a single comity and called Trumbull, in honor of Jonathan Trumbull, then governor of Connecticut. This was effected by proclamation of the governor and judges of the north- western territory. The county-seat was at. Warren. Now had the people of the Reserve a government to which they gladly acknowledged allegiance. The first court of this large county convened in Warren on Monday, August 25. 1800. The following were the first officers of Trumbull county:
John Young, Turhand Kirtland, Camden Cleveland, James Kingsbury, Eliphalet Austia, Esqs., justices of the peace and morum.
John Leavitt, justice of the peace and judge of probate: Solomon Griswold, Martin Smith, John Struthers, Caleb Baldwin, Calvin Austin, Edward Brockway, John Kinsman, Benjamin Davison, Ephraim Quinby, Ebenezer Sheldon, David Hudson, Aaron Wheeler, Amos Spafford, Moses Park, and John Miner, justices of the peace.
('alvin Pease, Esq., elerk; David Abbott. Esq., sheriff; John Hart Adgate, coroaer: Kliphalet. Austin, treasurer: John Stark Edwards, recorder.
The following is an extract taken from Judge Tur- hand Kirtland's diary:
"Monday, 25th .- Went to Warren; took dinner at Adgate's and went to Quinby's; met the judge and justices of the county, when they all took the oath of office, and proceeded to open the court of quarter sessions and court of common pleas, agrecably to the order of the goveraor. They proceeded to divide the county into eight townships, and appointed constables in each. A renire was issued to summon eighteen persons as grand jurors. "
These eight townships were as follows: Richfield, Middlefield, Vernon, Youngstown, Warren, Hudson, Painesville and Cleveland. The township of Cleve- land, in addition to a large extent of territory cast. of the Cuyahoga, embraced all of the Reserve lying west of that river. Judge Boynton says:
"On December 1, 1805, the county of Geauga was erected. It in- eluded within its limits nearly all of the present counties of Ashtalmila,
Geauga, Lake and Cuyahoga. On the 10th day of February, ISO;, there was a more general division into counties. That part of the Western Reserve lying west of the Cuyahoga and north of township No. 4. was attached to Geauga, to be a part thereof, until Cuyahoga should be organized. All of the present county of Lorain, north of Grafton, La- Grange, Pittsfield and Camden, belonged to, and was a part of, the county of Geanga, from February 10, 1807, until January 16, 1810. At that date, 1807, Ashtabula was erected out of Trumbull and teanga, to be organized whenever its population woukd warrant it. Also, all that part of Trumbull which lay west of the fifth range of townships, was erected iato a county by the name of Portage, and all of the Western Reserve, west of the Cuyahoga, and south of township No. 5, was annexed to, and declared to be a part of Portage. So that all of the present county of Lorain, south of Eaton, Carlisle, Russia and Henrietta belonged to, and was a part of, Portage, and remained a part of it until .January 22, 1811. On the 10th day of February, 1807, the county of Cuyahoga was carved ont of Geanga, to he organized whenever its pop- nlation should be sufficient to require it. On the 16th of January, 1810. the population having hecome sufficient, the county was declared organ- ized. On February 8, 1809, Huron was erected into a county covering the Fire Lauds, but to remain attached to Geauga and Portage, for the time being, for purposes of goverament.
"On January 22, 1811, the boundary line of Huron was extended rast, oa the line now dividing Camden and Henrietta, Pittsfield and Russia, Carlisle and LaGrange, to the southwest corner of Eaton; and from there, north on the line dividing Carlisle and Eaton, and Elyria and Ridgeville, to the northwest corner of Ridgeville; thence west to Black river, and down the same to the lake. On the day that these lines were so altered and extended, the legislature extended the south line of C'uy- ahoga county, from the southwest corner of Strongsville, west to the southwest corner of Eaton ; thence north, between Eaton and farlisle, to the northwest corner of Eaton; and from that puiat, west between Elyria and Carlisle, to the east branch of Black river, and down the same to the lake. Here was a contliet in boundaries. The boundary of Huron county inchided all of Elyria, extending east to Ridgeville: and the boundary of Cuyahoga included within its limits that part of Elyria lying east of the east branch of the river. The river was the dividing line between the two counties, in the one act; and the line between Elyria and Ridgeville was the dividing line in the other. This conflict was removed at the next session of the legislature, by adopting the township line, instead of the river, as the boundary line between the two counties, at this point. This adjustment of boundaries gave to Huron county the townships now kaown as Elyria, Carlisle, Russia. Henrietta, Brownhelm, Amherst, and all of Black River, and Sheffield lying west of the river; and to ('nyahoga county, Eaton, Columbia, Ridgeville, Avoa, and all of the townships of Black River and Sheffield lying east of the river. At that date, 1811, the territory now comprising the county of Lorain, belonged to the counties of Huron, Cuyahoga, and Portage.
"The county of Huron, although established in 1809, and extended east of Black River in 1811, was annexed to Cuyahoga in ISIo, for judicial and other purposes, and remained so annexed until January, 1815, whea it was organized, and assumed control of its own affairs.
" On the 18th day of February, 1812, Medina was formed, and comprised all of the territory between the eleventh range of townships and Huron county, and south of townships No. 5. It therefore included all of the present county of Lorain, south of Eaton, Carlisle, Russia and Henri- etta. On the 14th day of January, 1818, that county was organized, and its local government put into operation, it remaining in the interim. from the date of its formation to the date of its organization, attached to the county of Portage, for county purposes. On the 20th of Decem- ber. 1822, Lorain county was established. It took from the county of Huron the territory embraced in the townships of Brownhelm, Henri- etta, Amberst, Russia, Elyria, and Carlisk: and those parts of the townships of Black River and Sheffield that lie on the west of Black River, and from the conuty of Cuyahoga the townships of Troy, (now Avon), Ridgeville, the west half of Olmsted, (then called Lenox ), Eaton, Columbia, and those parts of Black River and Sheffield lying east of the river; and from the county of Medina, Camden, Brighton, Pittsfick), LaGrange, aad Wellington. The county, as originally formed, embraced seventeen and one-half townships, which, until the county was organ- ized, were to remain attached to the counties of Medina, Huron, and ('nyahoga, as formerly. It was, however, organized independently, and went into operation on the 21st day of January, 1824. In the organization of the county, it was provided that the first officers should be elected in April, 1821; and at that election, that part of Lenox that was brought into Lorain, should vote at Ridgeville, and that part of Brighton, lying previously in Medina, should vote in the adjoining township of Wellington.
"On January 20, 1827, the boundary lines were changed. The townsbips of Grafton, Penfield, Spencer, Homer, Ihuntington, Sullivan, Rochester, and Troy-some of them organized and some not-were detached from Medina, and annexed to, and became a part of, Lorain; and the half of Lenox, belonging to Lorain, was set off to Cuyahoga, to be a part of Middlebury, until otherwise provided. Upon the formation of Summit, in 1st, the townships of Spencer and Homer were reattached to Medina: and upon the formation of Ashland county, in February, 1816, Sullivan and Troy were detached from Lorain, and made a part of that eounty.
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HISTORY OF LORAIN COUNTY, OHIO.
Prior to this, and on the 29th of January, 1897, an act was passed, fixing the northern boundary of the county. The mode of forming and organ- izing the counties had been such as to leave unsettled the northern limit of the counties of Ashtabula, Geauga, Cuyahoga and Lorain. And in matters involving the exercise of criminal jurisdiction of offences com- mitted on the lake, in the vicinity of the shore, the question was of too much practical importaner to be left in doubt. The treaty between the United States and Great Britain fixed the line running through the mid- dle of the lakes, as the dividing line between the two countries. Connec- ticut had reserved the land between the. 11 north latitude, and 42º and 2. The course and shape of Lake Erie were such that the parallel of 42º and 2' would cross the middle lige of the lake ; and adjoining Ashtabula, that degree of latitude would be south of, and adjoining Lorain, north of the boundary line between Canada and the United States. This car- ried the northern boundary of Lorain to the middle of Lake Erie, with- out regard to the northern limit of the Western Reserve."
CHAPTER XI. CIVIL LIST.
On the 24th day of May following the organization of the county, the following record was made in the Court Journal on page one of volume one:
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