History of Sandusky County Ohio with Illustrations 1882, Part 28

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Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn.

We have already mentioned that the first legislation in Ohio making provision for the poor and unfortunate, denied all public relief to black and mulatto persons. This fact shows the deep prejudice entertained by the white people of Ohio against the colored race, in 1831.

The flutter of some angel's wing must have moved the air over the stagnant sea of mercy, and produced a little ripple of humanity, which reached the heart of Ohio, for, on the 14th of March, 1853, the General Assembly added a proviso to the then existing statute, whereby,

although black and mulatto persons were excluded from infirmaries, the law of exclusion should not be so construed as to prevent the directors of any infirmary, in their discretion, from admitting any black or mulatto person into said infirmary.

SECOND PURCHASE OF LAND.

The farm, though good and commodious, was not large enough to afford full and profitable employment for all the inmates, and it was thought good economy, in 1870, to acquire more land. Therefore the commissioners, on the 30th of January, 1870, purchased of F. S. White, and took a conveyance in fee simple for the following described other tracts of land:

The northeast quarter of the southeast quarter, and north part of the southeast quarter of the southeast quarter of section twenty-five, township five, range fifteen, containing together seventy acres of land, and paid for it the price of four thousand five hundred and fifty dollars.

This last purchased tract is about eighty rods east of the main body of the tract first purchased by the commissioners for poorhouse purposes.

The infirmary farm now embraces two hundred and seventy acres of excellent land near the city limits. This land has cost the county an aggregate sum of seven thousand five hundred and fifty dollars.

Improvements in clearing, fencing and draining have, from time to time, been made on the property, which are so mingled with the profits and products of the land, that it is now impracticable to tell the exact cost, or the precise amount of the people's money from taxes which has been expended on the farm. The commissioners have sold a small parcel of the land, and recently the continuation of the Lake Erie & Western Railway from

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Fremont to Sandusky, appropriated land for a track through the farm, leaving now about two hundred and sixty-five acres of the land, the title to which remains in the county. Good judges estimate the land, without the buildings, at one Hundred and thirty dollars per acre. The buildings are estimated now to be worth twelve thousand dollars. The infirmary, at the present time, is of sufficient capacity to receive and accommodate continually sixty-five persons, with a separate building for the insane which has a capacity to keep from five to seven persons.

NUMBER MAINTAINED IN THE INFIRMARY.

A statistical and detailed statement of the names, ages, and the particulars of birth, nationality, and circumstances of the persons who have been received into the institution and cared for by the county, does not seem to be necessary in a work of this kind, nor would such matter be interesting to our readers. Unfortunately the early reports of the directors do not afford the data for a detailed statement of the infirmary affairs and management, and some of the reports cannot now be readily found. We have, however, been able to find sufficient documents on file, and books from which to glean sufficient facts and figures to give some idea of the average number of persons supported at the infirmary in certain years. These facts will furnish some part of what has been done by the county for the unfortunate portion of men, women, and children.

Beginning with the year 1869, for instance, we find the average number of inmates to be 35; 1870, 42; 1871, 40; 1874, 40; 1875, 50; 1876, 56; 1880, 57.

The report for the year 1870 shows that one hundred and thirty transient persons were furnished with temporary relief such as a night's lodging, and supper and breakfast, and then sent on their way to some other place they wished to reach. These

persons do not, by the report, appear to be considered inmates, nor estimated in calculating the average number of those maintained at the institution.

The report for the year 1880 is the most complete and satisfactory of all on file, and furnishes some facts of interest to those who are engaged in works of charity. While the average number of inmates for the year is given at 57, the total for the year is given at 122; the number received was 39; born in the infirmary, 3; deaths in the infirmary, 14; removed to other counties, 5; removed to other institutions, 9; children under sixteen years of age, 12; children placed in homes, 3; hopelessly crippled when received, 1; number of inmates at date of report, September 1, 1880, 53. Idiotic males, 7; females, 3: total, 10. Taken together the reports show that of the inmates there are only about half as many females as males. But no doubt the proportion of females assisted is much larger, for more outside assistance is given to the women at their residences, then to men in like circumstances.

CARE OF THE POOR.

We cannot now state in detail the annual expenses for each year which has elapsed since the purchase of the poorhouse farm. But it is well to place on record some facts and figures concerning the cost of administering relief, as data for reference and comparison with the future. We find, by reference to the auditor's books, that for the years 1858, 1859, and 1860, the average expenditure of the poor fund for all purposes, was eighteen hundred and sixty- seven dollars per year.

For the two years ending September 10, 1874, the total for all purposes was seven thousand five hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-one cents, or at the rate of three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six dollars per year.

For the single year ending September

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21, 1865, the total expenses were five thousand and five dollars.

For the year ending September 2, 1867, the total was four thousand two hundred and thirty-two dollars.

For the year ending September 2, 1872, eight thousand five hundred and ninety-six dollars.

For the year ending September 1, 1873, seven thousand six hundred and forty three dollars.

For the year ending March 1, 1877, five thousand eight hundred and ninety-five dollars.

For the year ending March 1, 1878, seven thousand one hundred and thirty-three dollars.

For the year ending March 1, 1879, seven thousand six hundred and thirteen dollars.

For the year ending March 1, 1880, the total is about double that of the preceding year, and amounted to fourteen thousand and sixty dollars.

For the year ending March 1, 1881, the aggregate expenditures amounted to fourteen thousand two hundred and thirty-five dollars.

Of this sum of expenditures for the year ending March 1, 1881, seven thousand two hundred and ninety-three dollars were spent in giving relief to necessitous persons outside of the county infirmary. Thus we see that more than half the total expenditures go for what is called in the report, outside relief.

TRAMPS CAUSE INCREASED EXPENDITURE.

Following quickly after the financial panic of 1873 came the suspension of business in almost all its various departments, especially in the different branches of manufacturing and their dependent industries. The water was turned from the wheels of the great factories, the spindle ceased to revolve, and the inside of great

mills for the production of fabrics for clothing, were silent receiving-vaults for dead industry there. The great engines which furnished the driving power for machine shops ceased to puff and pulsate, the fires went out, and the boiler and the driving- wheel stood cold and motionless; the mines were closed, and the fires went out in the furnaces, and silence reigned in and around them. In short, the great manufacturing industries, on the employment in which so large a portion of our people depended for bread, were suddenly paralyzed. The workers in coal and wood, and cotton and brass, and iron and steel, had their bread and raiment, as it were, snatched from their hands by the terrible revulsion. Hundreds of thousands of workingmen were thus suddenly thrown out of employment, without food, without money, without property or other means to procure the necessaries of life. There were three things which they could do: starve, seek other and new employment which they knew nothing about, or appeal to the charity of their fellow men.

Some were assisted to live by acquaint- ances, neighbors, and relatives, and many by organized charitable institutions and kindhearted strangers. Still, there was a vast army who took the road to find employment, and beg for bread until they found it. Some time in the year 1877 these travelling seekers after employment became rather numerous in Sandusky county. At first they were well treated, relieved by our kindhearted people, and some found employment among our farmers and in other pursuits. This wave of labor-seekers rolled from East to West, and touched every city, town, hamlet, and house in its course. In time the really idle, vicious vagabonds of the cities and towns, saw their opportunity to travel without expense, and plunder as they went along by joining in the march and adopting the

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habits of the travelers. These vicious recruits tramped from place to place and house to house, and obtaining victuals and clothes without work became a regular pursuit, and the vagabonds had their systematic communications, with cabalistic signs and ceremonies, by which they knew each other, and., one could tell by marks upon the door, fence or gatepost where another visited, and whether the visit was successful, and also the character and circumstances of the occupants of the house.

Although the men who first started out in search of employment and bread were honest men and deserving of charity, and succeeded in obtaining it, when it became a regular occupation, and the scoundrels and vagabonds who adopted it began to develop their real characters by the commission of thefts, outrages, and crimes, the name became odious. The name formerly was applied to all travelling workmen who went from one place to another seeking employment, and was in no way disgraceful, but the name in 1879 and 1880 became the synonym of all that was vile and criminal. Numerous instances of theft, arson, and outrages upon unprotected women committed by tramps, were put before the public by telegraph and print, until the States were stirred

to legislation for the suppression of their business. The General Assembly. of Ohio passed an act on the 5th of May, 1877, to take effect July 1, 1877, to punish vagrancy, and therein declared that a male person physically able to perform manual labor, who had not made reasonable effort to procure employment, or who had refused to labor at reasonable prices, who is found in a state of vagrancy, or practicing common begging, shall be fined not more than fifty dollars, and be sentenced to hard labor in the jail of the county until the fine and costs of prosecution are paid; and, for his labor, such convict shall receive credit

upon such fine and costs at the rate of seventy-five cents per day. This law was never very effective, nor very rigidly enforced.

The city of Fremont, in 1878, built a lodging house for tramps, and also an enclosure where they could be put at work breaking stone for the public. But the expenses of this establishment were borne by the infirmary directors, and this, with the temporary relief to such tramps as could not work, greatly increased the expenditures of the infirmary fund for the years ending March 1, 1880, and March 1, 1881. Although the additional expenses for the relief of tramps in part occurred before 1880, the increased expenditures did not, in the regular course of business, appear in the reports until the years mentioned.

While the report of 1881 shows that the average daily number of inmates in the infirmary was only fifty-seven, the same report shows that relief was given to one hundred and thirty persons outside of it.

COST OF SUSTAINING THE INFIRMARY.

It is difficult to arrive at the exact cost of maintaining each person in the infirmary, but it may be approximated by taking the report of March 1, 1881, and estimating the present value of the land and buildings devoted to the purpose, and stated thus:

Total value of lands at forty six thousand three hundred and forty dollars.

Interest on value of farm for the year $2780.00

Add total expense account for the year 14235.00

Total expenses $17015.00

Deduct amount used for outside relief 7293.00

$9722.00

Deduct for furnace and other improve-

ments, say

500.00

Cost of supporting average number of fifty- seven inmates $9222.00

The average cost is therefore within a few cents of one hundred and sixty-two dollars per year, or three dollars and seven cents per week for each inmate,

CHAPTER XVIII.

TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY.

Soil-Surface-Timber.

L OOKING at the county as it appears now, covered with fields and meadows, orchards and woodland, yielding rich support to vegetable and animal life, all contributing to and culminating in the support of an intelligent and orderly pop- ulation of men, women, and children, in the full tide of plenty and prosperity, and enjoying all the delights of social life, it is difficult to realize that this region was once the bottom of an ocean. Yet science says it was so, and spreads out before the mind many and convincing facts to prove the assertion. The granite boulders which are found thickly scattered in various parts of the county, testify that they have been transported from some granite shore, and rounded into the form we find them by some of nature's forces. They bear no relation to any strata of rock found in the vicinity, but correspond with rock found in the highlands in the Northern and Western mountains. The best solution of the presence of the boulders, is that vast glaciers were formed in some remote period of unnumbered years, on the sides of the granite mountains North and West of this locality. That the action of frost and water had first detached large and small pieces from the mountain side, and they had tumbled down to where the action of the waves rolled them against each other until the sharper angles were worn away. Then, in the colder seasons, these huge masses of stone were grappled by the frost, in icy holdings, and when the glacier was full- formed the whole mass was by its own gravity precipitated down the

mountain side into the deep waters when it floated away to a southern shore, or shallow water, where it grounded and dissolved, leaving at the bottom its mass of debris. This debris consisted not only of the loosed stone, but also of the finely ground particles which had been worn from them, which were left to the action of the waters, washed from place to place to finally settle in the deeper and therefore calmer portions of the sea, and formed the clay beds so frequently met with in this part of the State. The coarser particles were not held in solution, but like the sand we see on the shores of our present lakes, were with pebbles washed to the shore lines and left as the water subsided.

Another proof of the assertion that this region was submerged is found in the rocks of the period. When uncovered these rocks show stria, or grooves, in parallel directions, which geologists trace directly to the action of glaciers, icebergs, and water.

Still another proof may be seen in the sea shells (mollusca), which are found in the lime rock at the highest point on Kelley's Island, in Lake Erie.

By some process of nature the waters, as generally stated in Genesis, subsided, whether by upheaval of some part of the earth, or by the depression of another part, is matter of speculation which does not properly form a part of this work. The subsidence of the water was slow, and the geological survey of Ohio, especially the district including the Maumee Valley, reveals several distinct shore lines of the

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ceding waters, one of which sweeps through a part of Michigan and Indiana, as far west as Fort Wayne, thence down through Van Wert, Allen, and Hancock, and including Sandusky county;

another sweeping southward only as far as Defiance, but also including Sandusky county. By this we see that the land in Sandusky county, and all north of it to the lake, was amongst the latest to appear above the waters in this region of country.

Finally, after the lapse of ages, the sea, which once covered this goodly land, subsided into the confines of the Atlantic Ocean, and the trough of its bottom formed the chain of great lakes, with their tributary rivers draining the fresh waters from the rains and snows of nearly half a continent.

FORMATION OF THE SOIL.

As the water receded, the land, thrown under the direct influence of the rays of the sun, produced vegetation, which decaying upon the surface of the clay, gravel and sand deposited by the water, formed our soils. West and north of the sand ridge, called York North Ridge, north of Clyde, and Butternut Ridge, south of it, so much of this vegetable deposit had accumulated that the land would not produce wheat for the first white settlers. It was too rich for wheat farming. This was the case especially with that portion of the county lying in what has been known as the Black Swamp, which us- ually designated that level portion of the county west of the Sandusky River and to the Maumee.

The soil in this part, now including the townships of Scott, Madison, Woodville, Rice, and the west part of Sandusky, was of this character. The township of Riley and a part of Townsend was similar in formation and soil to the Black Swamp proper.

On these soils when first plowed, es- pecially the Black Swamp proper, corn, grass, and potatoes were produced in won- derful abundance; but wheat and oats would overgrow, fall down and blast, and sometimes rot before harvest time. It was found, however, that after from five to ten years of tillage and drainage, this same land produced such crops of wheat as made the heart of the farmer glad, and now, this once forbidding and often condemned Black Swamp, ranks as one of the most productive portions of the State for all kinds of grain, grass, roots, and fruit.

It was no holiday amusement, however, to make a good farm in the Black Swamp. Real stalwarts were required to contend with water and mud under foot, while leveling and burning great tall trees, which spread out their branches overhead, almost entirely excluding the rays of the sun from the earth.

The horse was little used in the clearing of the Black Swamp; that animal was too fiery, nervous and thin-skinned to endure the mud, brush, flies, and mosquitoes which hindered, fretted, and tortured horses.

The more patient, stolid, and thick-skinned ox was preferred, and almost always used to drag the logs together for burning, and drawing the loaded cart or wagon through the mud and water.

For many years of the early settlement the Black Swamp was the favorite locality for the fever and ague and intermittent fever, then so common in all parts of the West, and was a bonanza for the physician. Now, however, an ox team can hardly be found; horses are universally used, and this once sickly locality is as healthy as any other portion of the county. The first lands entered and settled upon in the Black Swamp were those along the creeks and Portage River. Between these streams lay level land and shallow swails, where

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the water stood from the fall rains until July or August annually. These were considered of little value for some time afterward. Excepting the courage, industry and perseverance of the settlers, nothing has contributed so much to the reclamation of the Black Swamp as the system of public ditches, introduced into the county in 1859, under an act of the General Assembly of that year. This act gave the county commissioners of all the counties in the State, on the petition of inhabitants, the right to locate and cause ditches to be constructed, and have the expenses charged upon the land according to the benefits conferred on the several tracts.

William Driftmire, of Madison township, a native of Germany, has the distinction of first petitioning for a ditch under the law. The system of ditching which followed this first experiment of Mr. Driftmeir may be noticed more in detail in this work under the head of improvements.

The eastern portion of the county, es- pecially that part lying south and east of the sand ridge on which Clyde is situated, presented to the earlier settler a more inviting soil, not so heavily timbered, and most of it well drained by reason of its undulating or rolling surface. The sandy soil quickly absorbed the surface water, or collected it into limited spaces, connected frequently with what were commonly called sink-holes, where the water was conducted by a natural funnel down into the fissures of the lime-rock underlying that part of the county for a considerable distance east of Bellevue, which is situated on the east line of Sandusky and west line of Huron county, which divides that enterprising and wealthy village.

These features of the eastern portion of the county account for the fact that that part was settled and developed much earlier than the western part. This eastern portion

when first settled, unlike the western, was good wheat land from the first breaking up and tillage of the soil, and by proper farming is still producing superior crops of wheat, in both quantity to the acreage and quality of grain. For fruit, no better region can be found than the eastern portion of the county.

There is, perhaps, less poor and waste land in Sandusky county than in almost any other county of like dimensions in the State. On the whole, then, it may be said, that for richness of soil, and capacity for agricultural and horticultural productions, the county takes high standing among the best counties of the State.

GENERAL INCLINATION OF THE SURFACE.

The general inclination of the surface is from south to north, while the most authentic measurements of altitude indicate also a descent from west to east. Bellevue is stated to be one hundred and ninety-one feet above the average level of Lake Erie, Clyde one hundred and twenty-seven feet, and Fremont, at the site of the courthouse, where it is presumed the measurements were taken, only sixty-two feet above the surface level of the Lake. Notwithstanding this result of measurements, which are probably correct, the Portage and the Sandusky River bear strongly to the east or north as they flow, the former into the lake and the latter into Sandusky Bay, and all the creeks have the same general direction. This apparent difference between the altitude, ascertained by measurement, in indicating the general inclination of the surface, can no doubt be reconciled. Various causes may be assigned for the direction of a creek or river differing somewhat from the general inclination of the surface as a ledge of rock, the tenacity of the soil, and especially minor inclinations of the surface in a direction opposite to that of the general inclination.

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TIMBER.

The county when first formed included nearly all of what now composes the county of Ottawa, the territory of which was part prairie land. Ottawa county was organized in the year 1840, and left Sandusky with its present boundaries. The county, as now formed, was originally timbered land. In the south part of York township were found oak openings where the timber was not heavy, but all the other parts, saving a little prairie in Scott and Rice townships, were heavily timbered. Among the trees were found white, black, red, yellow, pin, and burr oak, white and red elm, shell-bark and smooth-bark hickory, black, white, and blue ash, poplar, cottonwood, black walnut, butternut, some mulberry, maple, honey-locust, beech, iron- wood, dogwood, and in two localities, one about three miles north of Fremont, on the east side of the river, the other on the ridge south of Clyde, in Green Creek township, a few chestnut trees; occasionally was found a tree of Pepperidge. Of all these kinds of timber the black walnut is now the most sought for as well as the most valuable. The primitive forests along the streams, especially along the Sandusky River and Green Creek; were largely made up of grand black walnut trees, On the river, in the vicinity of the mouth of Wolf Creek, in Ballville township, on quite a scope of land, this was the only, or nearly the only, timber. The farmers who first settled there used the best and straightest of these grand trees for rails with which to fence their farms. The timber split easily, and the rails were durable, it is true, and there was then no market in this region for either the logs or the lumber made from them, and besides, at the time of the earlier settlement, there were no sawmills to make the logs into lumber. Therefore, what of this now valuable timber was not used for rails was

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History of Sandusky County Ohio with Illustrations 1882, Part 28

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