History of Medina county and Ohio, Part 59

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1014

USA > Ohio > Medina County > History of Medina county and Ohio > Part 59

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"The struggle of statesmen for national unity, vigor and power, was as long and as des- perate as the struggle of the patriot soldiers for independence. The Constitution which has been handed down to ns, was a battle-field fonght over step by step, and inch by ineh. It has its Concord and Bunker Hill, its Valley Forge and Yorktown; and, as Washington led the forces and achieved the victory in oue field of strife, justly earning the title of Father of his conntry, so Alexander Hamilton marshalled the forces in the other, carried the day by the force of logic and statesmanship, and fairly

earned the no less honorable distinction of be- ing the Father of our political system.

"The right of the General Government to col- lect the customs duties ; to maintain an army ; to enforce treaties; to eoin money ; in short, cvery fundamental principle which has been engrafted into the organic law, giving the na- tion vigor and strength, if not life itself, was vehemently opposed.

"It was tedious work to get the consent of the States to the holding of a convention to frame a Constitution for consideration ; and the adoption of the instrument was altogether problematieal. But, finally, in 1789, six or seven years after the close of the Revolutionary war, the States, or a majority of them, oue after an- other, at wide intervals of time, and with reser- vations and evident reluctance, adopted it. Then, and not till then, did the United States of America become a nation-then, and not till then, could it be said that ' Liberty and Union were one and inseparable-now and forever !'

" We need to take a retrospective glance to rightly appreciate our present advancement, and fully realize how wonderful and rapid has been our progress.

" Although the impulse which led to the col- onization of America was zeal for religions tol- eration, it is only in our day that it has become a fixed and nnalterable and practical principle.

" Our forefathers of colonial times believed in the right of private judgment, provided private judgment coineided with their doctrines ! They established and maintained a connection be- tween church and state, and the influence of the religious system prevaded and dominated the rising political, educational and social in- stitutions of the country. The reality and in- tensity of the feeling may be inferred from the declaration of John Adams : 'That a change in the solar system might be expected as soon as a change in the ecclesiastical system of Massachusetts ! Massachusetts was not alone -- in all the colonies there was a nnion of the

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politieal and religious systems, either direetly, or indirectly in the way of religious tests as qualifieatious for eitizenship or official prefer- ment.

" What a revolutiou in thought has oeeurred we realize to-day in the abandonment of that system iu nearly every State of the Union-the only lingering relie to remind us that it ever prevailed, being the exemption of ehureh prop- erty from taxation-and that, too, must ere- long eease to be a relie-for the whole system was long ago 'smitten with deeay in the Old World, aud it eannot flourish in the New.'

" The sun still shines iu the heavens, and the planets revolve with the same unvarying pre- eision and serene indifferenee to our affairs as they did in the days of John Adams ; but the eeelesiastieal system of Massachusetts, and all the other eolony States, has experienced a ehange ; and more nearly than ever before eon- form to the requirements of the great founder of Christianity, who solved the problem of church and state, in one sentenee, 1,800 years ago, when He gave the adviee to " Render unto Cæsar the things that are Caesar's, aud unto God the things that are God's.'

" The divoree of the nation from the eeelesi- astieal system has not made us a Godless na- tion ; on the contrary, throughout the length and breadth of the land, to-day 40,000,000 of people, irrespective of faith or ereed, fervently respond to the invitation extended by the Pres- ident of the United States in his Proclamation issued last week, 'to mark the return of this day by some publie religious and devout thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bless- ings which have been bestowed upon us as a nation during the eentenary of our existenee, and humbly to invoke a continuanee of His protection.'

" Our educational system is peeuliarly Amer- iean in origin, eharaeter and growth. Common sehools were established in the eolonies at a very early date. Doeuments over 200 years

old are found on record, respeeting the estab- lishment of sehools, which presented a plan em- braeing 'loeal responsibility, State oversight, moderate charges or free instruetion, and reeog- nition of the primary sehool, the grammar school and the university.' The watchword of Conneetieut 100 years ago-' that the public schools must be cheap enough for the poorest, and good enough for the best'-is our wateh- word to-day ; and the common-sehool system of our fathers, expanded and improved-‘ dif- fering in details but the same in outline- furnishes edueation of the children of our people in every State, from the Atlantic to the Paefie.'

" It is true there has been a controversy from the beginning in regard to religious instruetion in the sehools, and we are ealled upon at the elose of the first eentury of the Republie to set- tle the vexed question. Can we doubt that it will be settled, so that 'instruction shall be free, unseetarian, non-partisan, and open to all, without distinetiou of raee, birth-plaee, or so- eial stauding ? '

" Perhaps we are not so well prepared as the older uations to eoufer the benefits of what is ealled the higher education ; but our progress iu this direction has been remarkable when we consider what an immense amount of pioneer work has had to be done. The nine colleges of 1776 have iuereased to five huudred and fifty in 1876, and millions of dollars iu gifts are an- nually given to Ameriean institutions of learn- ing. In no other country in the world has a eollege been established for the edueation of deaf mutes. We have no less than forty-five institutions for the edueation of that elass of unfortunates ; and twenty-seven institutions for the education of the blind. Our eities and towns are provided with free libraries ; and the modern newspaper, grown to be a compendium of all knowledge no less thau the record of eurrent events, finds its way to every home in the land. ' As a nation, if we are not the best,

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we certainly are the most generally educated of any people in the world.'

" In literature, our Shakespeare and Milton and Burns-our Dante and Goethe-have not appeared ; but for the English Goldsmith we have Washington Irving ; for the cynic Carlyle, Emerson the thinker ; for Chatham and Sheri- den and O'Connell, we have Webster, Choate and Phillips ; for the historians Macaulay and Froude, we have Bancroft and Motley ; and for the poets and song-writers of all countries and climes we have our Longfellow, Bryant, Whit- tier and Holmes.

" If the work that has been done in this eoun- try in the field of original scientific research and discovery will not compare with that of Germany, France and England, it is because we have not had the leisure to devote to the pa- tient, monotonous and apparently objectless labor, without which results are not reached. For the most part the business of our lives has been to get roofs to shelter us, and food and raiment to sustain us. If it was literally true that our forefathers seeured a foothold and es- tablished a home on this continent, with-

" ' One hand on the mason's trowel, And one on the soldier's sword,'

-it is no less true that we, their deseendants, have had to fight and build and struggle to subdue the mighty West.

" We crossed the mountains, as of old The Pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free.'

" Yet Franklin, Rittenhouse, Fulton, Morse, Henry, Howe and ' Old Probabilities ' are Amer- ican names suggestive of discoveries and appli- cations in science without which the civilized world would be much more than a century be- hind its present progress. Our science has been immensely practical, not abstract ; and we have applied the science of the age and of all ages, until we outstrip the oldest, the largest

and the most powerful nations of the world in the extent of our material prosperity.

" What a growth has been ours ! What pros- perity we have reached ! In no spirit of vain boasting, but with grateful hearts and joyful pride, do we point to the blessings that crown this eentennial year of the Republic.

" The inventive genius of the world has been laid under contribution to aid our mighty enterprises and to relieve our over-burdened hands and brains of mueh of the drudg- ery of labor. Our resources have been devel- oped at a marvelous rate, and to an extent that has made us prodigal of wealth; but yet, they are practically inexhaustible. Our territorial area embraces nearly the whole continent. Our eommeree spreads over every sea, the grimy smoke of our steamships curling upward from every port in the known world ; and the steam whistle that ealls the meehanie to his daily labor in our villages, is heard in the remotest interior of Japan, as the key note of a newer and bet- ter civilization. The 3,000,000 of people who, one hundred years ago, were invineible in the holy eause of liberty, have multiplied to nearly fifty millions; the thirteen States to thirty- eight; and our national wealth is practically beyond computation.

"The borders of the Great West have been pushed from the Alleghanies to the lakes, and from the lakes to the prairies, from the prairies to the plains, and from the plains to the mount- ain ranges, on whose further slopes the surf of the Pacific beats a perpetual rhythm.

"Our telegraphs and railroads have annihi- lated time and space. Where the emigrant of 1849 trudged for months beside his heavily loaded wagon, crossing the American desert to reach the El Dorado of California, the steel locomotive and palace cars of the fast train now speed over the same distance in three days and a half, and the telegraph fairly transmits to our ears the whir of its wheels, as it flies from station to station.

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" It is said of us that we are given to boast- ing ; but how can we recount the story of our progress, so that it shall not seem to imitate the romance of Aladdin's lamp? Our most severely simple record tells of achievements that winged Mercury with pride could have re- counted to the gods; or Puck; girdling the earth in forty minutes, could have joyfully re- peated to the astonished people of fairy land! Our soberest words seem like wild exaggera- tions.

" Embarrassments and periods of depression we have had, but they have been temporary, and, in the end, beneficent, as the one will be through which we are passing now.

" Our youth, the priueiples underlying our system, the arts of peace we have cultivated, and our community of interests and simplicity of social customs, have been measurably our safeguards against national misfortunes and calamities which follow national departures from the laws of right. But we have not es- eaped the peualty of any wrong action. Our brief and inexpensive war of conquest resulted in increased sectional strife, and only gave us a viper that stung the bosom that warmed it.

"By the sacrifice of the best blood of the nation, and the expenditure of untold treasure, we extirpated slavery and atoned for our former negleet of the rights of the black race. His- tory will bear testimony to the redeemiug fact, that, during all the years the system of slavery disgraced our civilization, it was only tolerated, not protected by the organic law of the land, aud that the judgment and conseieuee of the larger part of our people held the practice in abhorrence.

"To-day the nation is free in reality as well as in name. The hauds that were raised to dis- member it for the sake of perpetuating a crime against humanity were beaten down by the up- rising of a people determined that the Union, founded upon justice and liberty, and cemented by the blood of the patriots of the Revolution,

should not be impaired or destroyed. The tat- tered battle flags of our loyal regiments, the flower-strewn mounds in our graveyards, the armless veterans in our streets, speak eloquently of the terrible earnestness of the struggle. The amended constitution guaranteeing the rights of the enfranchised race, and their eleva- tion to citizenship, and equality before the law, tell of our reparation for their wrongs. And this flag, 'with not a stripe erased, or a star obscured,' waves over the length and breadth of the land to-day, the symbol of beauty and glory, viudicating our courage and honor before the whole world.

" It would be recreancy to the great memo- ries of this day to leave unsaid that there are blots on our record the odium of which can never be effaced-crimes against liberty, against humanity, against civilization. The treason of Benedict Arnold, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the torture of our soldiers in the prison- pens of the South, and sympathy for the cause which demanded and the miscreants who com- mitted the atrocity, are crimes that deserve, and to the end of time, will receive, the execra- tion of the eivilized world. Over the memory of individuals whose misdeeds are committed from sudden impulse, passion, or the ordinary motives of depravity, we throw the mantle of charity and oblivion; but for those whose crimes, like these, humiliate and involve a na- tion in their consequences, 'History has no forgiveness and the memory of man no forget- fulness.'

" In conclusion, fellow-citizens, I trust to violate none of the proprieties which all parties on this day cordially unite in observing, by eonjuriug you to let your condemnation rest with emphasis upon corruption, intriguing, and faithlessness in the administration of public af- fairs. Demand the unconditional abandon- ment of practices not strictly in accordance with the dictates of simple truth and plain honesty. Corruption, prostitution of power to

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purposes of self-aggrandizement, fraud, and a long catalogue of viees of a darker hue have fastened themselves upon every government, like barnacles on a ship, sinee governments be- gan. Absolute purity and fidelity in the exe- eution of publie trusts it were vain to expeet ; but the people of a nation who exeuse or pali- ate the slightest deviation from the straightfor- ward performauee of duty in their public serv- ants are themselves responsible, and justly suffer the consequences. Honesty and faithful- ness in the every-day life of the citizens of the State, will secure honesty and faithfulness in official life. We have no trained elass of pub- lic funetiouaries, and need none. No need of a complicated eivil serviee system, when we can go into our offices, stores and factories, into our shops and on our farms and choose at a venture men educated, self-poised and capable of filling any offiee from President down. The strength and glory of the nation, which to-day enters upon a new era, depend not upon the greatness of its

rulers, but upon the virtue, industry and intel- ligenee of its people ; and for the untried fut- ure this is the 'promise and poteney' of a national career, the highest and completest that human society ean reach. Let us hope that the impulses which go forth from this day to influence our national character, may give strengtlı to our love of justice, as well as a brighter glow to our patriotism.

" As we look baek over our history from the vautage ground of a hundred years, we see that the nation of to-day is not the nation of yester- day, but the outgrowth of conditions and strug- gles which ean never be repeated. And he who stands in this place on our next Centen- nial Fourth of July, to review the eeutury hid- den now by the vail of the future, will see that progress has been made, not by repeating our experience, but in new directions-our age and our aets furnishing the impulses which lead into new pathways of enterprise and honor."

CHAPTER VII.

MEDINA TOWNSHIP-DESCRIPTION AND TOPOGRAPHY-COMING OF THE WHITES-LOST IN THE WOODS-INDUSTRIES OF THE PIONEERS-EARLY INCIDENTS-RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL -- VILLAGES.

A N unbroken forest, that, when, elothed in its robes of summer luxurianee, was almost impenetrable to the rays of the noonday sun and shut ont his light from the virgin earth beneath ! No sound, other than the war of the tempest, the howl of the wild beast, the yell of the Indian, had ever echoed through its gloomy aisles, until the advent of the sturdy pioneer. Far off in his New England home, reports had come to him, as he toiled among his sterile hills, of a land lying away to the West, that flowed, at least figuratively, with milk and honey, and had determined him to seek in this fabled land the wealth it promised. As he

alighted from his lumbering wagon, drawn hither by oxen, the whole range of his vision took in a wild and tangled forest, nothing more. No human habitations, no ehurehes, no villages, no schoolhouses, dotted the landseape, or nestled in the heavily timbered groves. It was a pie- ture little caleulated to inspire enthusiasm in the new comer, and less determined men would have despaired at the uninviting prospect un- folded before them. But their strong arm and indomitable energy have triumphed and wrought a grand transformation in the sixty odd years that have come and gone sinee the first white man squatted in this section of the country. In

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the pages preceding, matters pertaining to the county at large have been taken up, and the different threads of its history fully carried out. In this chapter, our business is with Medina Township, and everything in its history will be treated of in its proper place.

The township of Medina lies just north of the center of the county, and is bounded north by Brunswick Township, east by Granger, south by Montville, and west by York. It is a little less than a full township, being only about four and a half miles north and south, by fonr and a half miles east and west, and is designated as Township 3 north, Range 14 west. It is somewhat rolling and even hilly in places, but not enough so to render much of it unfit for cultivation. It is sufficiently rolling, however, to require little or no artificial drainage. A heavy growth of timber originally covered the entire township, comprising the different species indigenous to this section of the State, viz .: oak, beech, maple, hickory, ash, with a little poplar and walnnt, together with some of the smaller shrubs.

The soil is mostly of a clayey nature, and produces corn, oats and wheat bountifully, and also is adapted to grazing, and is nsed con- siderably in that way. Some attention is paid to stock, particularly cattle, and the dairy bnsi- ness is one of the large and valnable industries of the township, though not so extensively car- ried on now as it was a few years ago. The township has an excellent natural drainage. The most important stream is the Rocky River, which traverses it in almost all directions ; a branch flowing from northeast to sontheast, by way of Weymonth, then, taking a curve, it passes on to the northwest, leaving the township near the northwest corner. It has any number of branches and tributaries, most of which are small, and many of them nameless on the maps, but afford to the land most excellent drainage, and to the farmer an abundance of stock water. In early times, Rocky River was utilized by the 1

pioneers, who built a number of mills along its tortuons conrse, for which it furnished good water power. One railroad passes through a corner of Medina Township, which, since its completion, has been of great benefit to the people as a means of bringing markets nearer home, and as affording a mode of travel and transportation superior to what they had before enjoyed.

Medina Township was settled principally from the old Nutmeg State, consequent npon the fact, perhaps, that this entire section, known as "the Reserve," belonged originally to Connect- icut, as fully noted in another part of this work. But few of the early settlers of Medina, there- fore, but were "Connectiont Yankees," as they were termed by the people from other States. They brought their natural thrift and energy and persevering will with them, qualifications essentially necessary in the wilderness life that opened np before them. These characteristics bore them safely over the trials and privations of border life and led them throngh all difficnl- ties to final prosperity and happiness.

The larger portion of the land in this town- ship was owned by one Elijah Boardman, a native of New Milford, Conn. In 1795, he be- came a member of the Connectiont Land Com- pany, and was thns made the proprietor of large tracts of land in the Western Reserve. A few others owned small tracts in Medina Township, among whom were Homer Board- man, Jndson Canfield, Z. Briggs, Roger Skin- ner and perhaps some others. The township was surveyed, in 1810, into eighty-one lots of eqnal size, the better to snit purchasers of that day, who were generally men of small means. The first cabin erected in the township was on Lot 22, by a man named Hinman. He and his brothers cleared about three acres ; bnilt a small cabin, in which they lived for a short time. But fearing the Indians, who were tronblesome in this region in consequence of the war of 1812, then in progress, the Hinmans left their

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little improvement in one of the periodieal seares of the time, and never returned.

The first permanent settler in Medina Town- ship was Zenas Hamilton, a native of Dan- bury, Conn. He had made a purchase of some land in the township and determined to oeen- py it, and so, in the latter part of the summer of 1814, he made preparations to move hitber. He left Harpersfield, N. Y., where he had been living for a short time, and, in October, 1814, arrived in Medina Township. He went into the deserted eabin of Hinman, Lot 22 being a part of his purchase. As soon as he eonld build another and more eommodions eabin, he moved his family into it. This latter eabin, however, was not a palaee by any means, but strietly of the primitive and pioneer pattern, being innoeent of any iron, even a nail. It was built of logs or poles, one-story high, with elapboard roof, and puneheon floor and door, the puncheons fastened with wooden pegs in- stead of nails, and the boards of the roof held to their plaees with " weight-poles." Mr. Ham- ilton and his family were alone in Medina Township-" monarchs of all they surveyed" -- for a year and a half before another family ar- rived in the neighborhood to relieve them of their utter loneliness. Their fare at best was meager, and sometimes required the utmost exertions to obtain a suffieieney to satisfy the eravings of hunger. To sueh extremities were they often redueed, that they would pnt eorn into a leather bag and ponnd it into a coarse meal or hominy. At other times they were foreed to shell out wheat and rye by hand, and boil it, to maintain life until they could get meal from the mill, twenty or thirty iniles dis- tant, by measurement, but, taking the roads of the times into consideration, some fifty or sev- enty-five miles. No one of the present day ean begin to realize their trials and privations. Experienee was necessary to form a just idea of them. Hamilton was quite a hunter, and through this means was enabled to supply his

family with plenty of meat. Deer and bears were numerons, and during the first few years he killed fifteen bears, besides a great number of deer and turkeys. These additions to the family pantry were of great benefit, and served them in the place of pork and beef. The fol- lowing ineident is told of him, which shows his prowess in hunting : He was out in the forest one day, and, approaching a large oak tree, dis- covered a bear at the foot, eating aeorns, and, as he looked np, saw in the tree the old one and her two eubs, getting off the aeorns. Knowing that, as soon as he fired at the one on the ground, it would be the signal for the rapid deseent of those in the tree, he prepared for the emergeney, by taking some bullets in his month and making every preparation for has- tily re-loading his gun. He then shot the larger bear at the foot of the tree, then hastily put some powder in his gun, spit a ball into the muz- zle, gave it a "chug" on the ground, eausing it to prime itself (this was before the invention of pereussion eaps), and in this way shot the others before they could get down and away, thns piling them in a heap at the foot of the tree in a very short time.

Mr. Hamilton was, for many years, a promi- nent and active member of frontier society, and a most worthy eitizen. His eabin was the gen- eral stopping-place of early settlers, until they conld find a shelter, or ereet a eabin of their own. He died near the township center, many years ago, and was mourned by a large eirele of friends. The next settler in Medina Town- ship to Hamilton was James Moore, who arrived in the early part of March, 1816. In a narrative published by him, he says: " At this time, Zenas Hamilton and family were the only inhabitants in the township. While I was getting material together on Lot 52 for a eabin, James Palmer, Chamberlin and Marsh arrived, and assisted me in putting np my eabin, being the third in the township; this must have been in the fore part of April, 1816.

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History of Medina county and Ohio, Part 59

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey Number of Pages: 1014

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?; Battle, J. H; Goodspeed, Weston Arthur, 1852-1926; Baskin & Battey. Chicago. pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : Baskin & Battey
Number of Pages: 1014