History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers, Part 6

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company
Number of Pages: 726

USA > Ohio > Erie County > History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers > Part 6
USA > Ohio > Huron County > History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers > Part 6

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A second and similar road was ordered laid out north and south through the county, on or near the line between the twentieth and twenty-first ranges. Six hundred dollars was appropriated for the work, and Ebenezer Jesup, Jr., appointed agent to carry it into effect, and to serve without compensation.

A third, leading east and west in the county, to commence on the east side thereof, at the termination of the road already laid, marked or cut through the lands of the Connecticut Land Company, leading from the Portage in the southerly part thereof, but- ting on said east line, and extend to, or near the middle or center of the south line of the town of Norwalk until it intersects the road already voted to be laid out, or as near as the nature of the ground will admit.

That a fourth road be laid out to commence at or near the south line of Norwalk, where the north and south road erosses it, then running west on township lines, or as near the same as practicable, to the west line of the county.

Another similar road to begin on the south line of Fairfield at the north and south road and running west, following town lines as near as practicable to the county line.

Five hundred dollars were appropriated for the construction of the first road and six hundred dollars for the other two roads, and Isaac Mills appointed agent to construct them, to serve withont compensation.

FINAL PROCEEDINGS.

The report of Joseph Darling, treasurer, was sub- mitted, showing the total receipts up to October 10, 1809, as forty-seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-five dollars and seventy-seven cents, with a

balance in the treasury of thirty-five hundred and sixty-nine dollars and eleven cents. This amount was reduced at subsequent meetings of the directors, by payment of the sums appropriated for making roads, salaries of directors, etc., until the balance in the treasury was reduced to one hundred and twenty-two dollars, which was by vote at the final meeting appropriated: sixty-two dollars to cut a road from Norwalk to Sandusky bay, and sixty dollars to cut a road or roads in the town of Danbury, on the peninsula. The last meeting of the board of direc- tors was held at the county house in New Haven, Connecticut, August 28, 1811, the full board being present. Their names were as follows: Guy Richards . and William Eldridge, of New London; Ebenezer Avery, Jr., of Groton; Ebenezer Jesup, Jr., of Fair- field; Taylor Sherman, of Norwalk; Philip B. Brad- ley, of Ridgefield; and Epiphras W. Bull, of Dan- bury.

The board then drew up a petition to the general assembly of Ohio, reciting that they had performed the duties required of them by the act of incorpora- tion, and asked that their records be legalized, so that they may be forever kept as a part of the records of Huron county, and that they, or duly certified tran- scripts, be received as legal evidence.

It was voted that upon the payment of outstanding orders already drawn, the bond of the treasurer shall be cancelled.

" Voted, That this meeting be adjourned without day, and never to be holden again.

" Attest: ISAAC MILLS, Clerk."

CHAPTER VI.

PHYSICAL FEATURES OF HURON COUNTY-GEOG- RAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY.

HURON county lies at the southwest portion of the Connecticut Western Reserve, and originally and for many years after its settlement it comprehended all of the Fire-lands, or five hundred thousand acres. Its southern boundary is the forty-first parallel of latitude, and until 1838, when Erie county was formed out of its territory, it extended northward to the shores of Lake Erie, including the peninsula and islands north of Sandusky bay. The present territo- rial limits of Huron county embrace, with the excep- tion of Ruggles township, which was set off at the time of the formation of Ashland county in 1846, towns number one, two, three and four in the twen- tieth, twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third and twenty-fourth ranges of townships in the Connecticut Western Reserve. These townships were laid out as nearly five miles square as possible, but owing to the fact that the breadth of the Fire lands' tract, from east to west. is twenty-five miles, fifty-one chains and thirty-two links, each township, from east to west, is a fraction more than five miles in extent.

" Milan.

Vredenburg

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

The county is, then, generally speaking, a rec- tangle, twenty-five miles long by twenty miles in width-its greater length being from east to west. By the original survey, each township was to contain about sixteen thousand acres of land. This would give the area of the county as four hundred and seventy-five square miles, or three hundred and six thousand acres. The auditor's duplicate for 1877 has three hundred and six thousand and ninety- seven acres, which, however, does not include lands regularly laid out into town lots. Land occupied by roads is sometimes, but not generally omitted, as are publie grounds, cemeteries, &c .; so that probably two or three thousand acres are thns left out.

The county is bounded on the north by Erie county, on the east by Lorain and Ashland, on the south by Ashland and Richland, and on the west by Seneca and Sandusky counties. It has nineteen townships, as follows: Wakeman, Clarksfield, New London, Townsend, Hartland, Fitchville, Greenwich, Norwalk, Bronson, Fairfield, Ripley, Ridgefield, Peru, Greenfield, New Haven, Lyme, Sherman, Nor- wich and Richmond. Its principal towns and vil- lages are Norwalk, Bellevue, Monroeville, Plymouth, Wakeman, New London and Collins. The popula- tion of the county in 1870 was as follows:

Bronson

980

Norwalk city.

4198

Clarksfield .

1062

Norwich

1122

Fairfield.

1332

Pern

129%

Fitchville.

795

Richmond

880

Greenfield.

954

Ridgefield

1189

Greenwich

881

Monroeville village.

1344

Hartland.

953

Ripley .

1089

Lyme, exclusive of village ..

1161

Sherman

1260

Lyme part of Bellevue.

1219

Townsend.

1300

New Haven ..

1221

Wakeman.

1216

New London township

797

· New London village.

678

Total.

29,616

Norwalk township

1254

The village of Bellevue lies partly in Sandusky county, and that of Plymouth partly in Richland county.

Huron county has no lakes or considerable ponds; no large or navigable streams; no high hills, rocky ledges, nor ravines or gorges of considerable depth or extent, and yet the surface is far from an unbroken, monotonous plain; on the contrary, it is pleasantly diversified with hills and dales of often picturesque beauty and attractiveness. The slope of the county is to the northward, the numerous streams that are found within its limits all bearing tribute to Lake Erie. On its southern boundary these streams are well nigh insignificant in size; in fact, within five miles, the divide is reached, south of which the streams are tributary to the great Mississippi basin. Huron county is drained by two principal water courses- Huron and Vermillion rivers-at the mouth of each, especially at the former, there are good harbors; but the streams themselves are too small to be navigable to any distance. However, by the aid of a canal the former stream was at one time ascended by lake craft as far as the village of Milan.

Vermillion river has its source in Savannah lake, Ashland county, where it connects with streams which are tributary to the Ohio, the valleys uniting

at the divide in a continuous channel, now deeply filled with drift, indicating that the drainage of both valleys was formerly southward. The connection of the head waters of Huron river with the streams run- ning south is not so distinctly marked, yet it can be easily traced between them and the two valleys, one to the east and one to the west of Mansfield, in Rich- land county, where the drainage is also to the south. This is indeed a general characteristic of the streams in this part of the State, which have their origin near the divide, between the waters of Lake Erie and the Ohio river. They are not separated by a water shed, and fed by springs flowing from opposite sides of it, but have their common origin in valleys having a northerly and sontherly direction, and usually com- mence in marshes or small lakes, now occupying the summit of the pass. Here they receive the surface drainage from the higher lands on each side, which accumulates in the pond or marsh, and gives rise to streams flowing in opposite directions. The valleys of these streams are filled with alluvium, resting upon drift deposits, and they have rocky beds only in places where obstructions have diverted the stream into new channels.

There is one peculiar feature of Huron county, through rarely, if ever, mentioned in print: it is the eastern limit of the prairies. Here the adventurous explorer, making his way westward, first saw indica- tions that there was anything within the country be- sides interminable woods and forest jungles, and soon became aware that these little openings, or " savan- nas," sometimes but little better than marshes, were the precursors, or forerunners, of the vast treeless plains of the farther west, on which the rank grass grew and swayed in the wind, which, though gentle at times, often sweeps over them like the tempest on the open sea. But Huron county was mostly in the heavily wooded region. Here grew the giant oaks, the spreading beech; the sturdy maple yielding its saccharine sweets; the drooping and graceful-boughed elm; the slender, smooth, strong hickory with its gnarling limbs, its shaggy bark and its plentiful sup- ply of nuts; the walnut, white and black; while the stately shining trunks of the sycamore and ash, sym- bolic of toughness, were not wanting. On the sandy ridges grew the chestnut, blooming in midsummer, and furnishing the early settler with rail timber, easily wronght, light to handle, and resisting decay for a generation. Here, also, was found the wild cherry, with its not unpleasant, though bitter and medicinal fruit, and its close-grained and handsome wood, snita- ble for cabinet work, but now superseded by the black walnut. The dogwood, with its broad-petaled blos- soms and its clusters of glistening crimson berries; the juneberry, its flowers appearing before the frost and snow are fairly gone, and its pleasant tasting fruit, ripening at the time of strawberries; the sassafras, with its tender and fragrant boughs, its strong-scented bark and roots; the grape-vine, climbing among the saplings of the forest, and with its broad leaves

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

thickly massed forming overhead a canopy which shut ont the sun and almost defied the rain to penetrate. There were not wanting scenes of sylvan beauty, and no wonder the wild Indian and the scarcely less wild white hunter loved the forest better than the corn- field and meadow, and at their approach fled west- ward where they would be undisturbed by the cchoes of the ringing axe, and the crushing, cracking sound that was heard when a great tree was felled.

GEOLOGY .*

SURFACE DEPOSITS.

The underlying rocks are sandstone, argillaceons and bituminous shales, with a strip of lime rock in the northwestern border of the county. These rocks have been broken up and pulverized by nature's vast ice- plow. The finely comminuted debris has been in- timately mixed with that of the granite of the north and of all the intervening rocks, and the whole spread out over the surface of the county. As the waters which covered the surface at the close of the glacial epech receded, terraces were formed, and each, for a long period, constituted a shore swamp, in which the decomposing vegetable material accumulated to form a soil of unsurpassed and permanent fertility.

The material composing the upper terraces were long subjected to the action of shore waves, and in places the surface is occupied by sand dunes and as- sorted gravel. The lower terrace is a broad prairie, with swampy muck soil. When the country was first settled, some of this was not reclaimed from water, but the greater part of it is now remarkably fertile farming land, especially adapted to the cultivation of corn.

The general elevation of the level prairie land in Lyme township is one hundred and twenty-five feet above the lake. Here is a succession of remarkable sand dunes, which rise to the height of thirty feet. These sand hills were formed, as was much of the main sand ridge of the county, by wind and wave action along the lake shore, and on the margin of a shore swamp, cansed by this barrier, in which vege- table debris accumulated for a long time. The north side of the ridge exhibits the irregular winding out- line of the lake beach, while on the south it is usually bordered by irregular, billowy dunes of sand-the ridge, apparently formed by the waves, the dunes by the wind. West of Monroeville, the ridge is a regu- lar, well marked beach line, rising about ten feet above the plain, at the south of it, and fifteen above that, at the north. On the south side are the irrregu- lar dunes, and on the north a wide stretch of level prairie.

At Four Corners, the ridge becomes less conspicu- ous but maintains the same elevation, the marginal swamps of the old lake having become quite shallow. Beyond this, to the limit of the county, the ridge has an elevation of only from ten to fifteen feet above the

level plain, which stretches away to the north of it. At a point near where the Bellevne road crosses the county line, the limestone rock, in beds, may be seen cropping out of the sand ridge, indicating a low rock bluff, formerly the shore of the lake, which the waves have buried beneath the sand. Where the ridge does not rest upon the bed rock, the materials below it are here fifteen to twenty feet of silicious, blue clay, with abundance of granite bowlders and pebbles, and frag- ments of shale, with quicksand below, resting upon the rocks, and in which a supply of water is reached by wells.

While the great body of this level land, reclaimed from the old swamps, is exceedingly fertile, there is a remarkable exception in a large tract north of Monroe- ville, and extending into Erie county. The soil is a fine, black, peaty mold, presenting nothing to the eye to distinguish it from the productive corn lands sur- rounding it. It was cleared and put under cultiva- tion, but it refused to tolerate grain, or corn, or any valuable crop. Here and there an apple tree sprang up, spontaneously seeded, and grew vigorously. Ef- forts at thorough drainage were unavailing. The soil is comparatively thin, the bed rock coming near the surface; but equally thin soils, in adjacent places, are productive, so that this cannot be the real cause of its infertility. A washing of the soil showed, with lit- mus paper test, a decided acid reaction. The vege- tation also indicates the presence of acids. This is, undoubtedly, the sole cause of its sterility. The un- derlying rock is Huron shale, which is filled with concretions of the bi-sulphide of iron; wherever this is exposed to the joint action of air and water, it is decomposed, the sulphur set free, which uniting with the oxygen of the air, produces sulphuric acid. These changes are facilitated by cultivation, so that steps taken to improve the soil only aggravate the evil. If this is the cause of the difficulty, the remedy is easily found. A generous application of ashes, or of quick- lime, will be sufficient. The lime, uniting with the acid, will form sulphate of lime, or plaster, itself a good fertilizer. The alkali must be well mixed with the soil, and the application may have to be repeated, until all the pyrites within reach of atmospheric in- fluences has decomposed, and yielded up its sulphur.

East of Norwalk the sand ridge has a gently wav- ing contour on the north, and is bounded by a broad water plain, except as modified by recent erosion. On the south it is very irregular in its outline, the billowy dunes being of varying height and form, and often extending a long distance from the ridge. The materials of the ridge are, at the top, finely washed sand, resting upon gravel, with a profusion of granite bowlders, and below this, bowlder clay or bed rock. This is the only well marked and continuous sand ridge in the county, a winding highway, thrown up by the action of the waves, resting in places directly upon the bed rock, in others upon the coarser ma- terials of the drift clays, sometimes burying beneath it the debris of the old shore swamps, and at others

* From Geological State Survey of Ohio, volume III.

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

extending over chasms one hundred or more feet in depth, filled to the general level with drifted material.

Granite bowlders of various sizes may be occasion- ally seen projecting through the sand of the ridge, and through the peaty marsh soil between the ridge and the lake, presenting the appearance of having been dropped from floating icebergs. About one mile southwest of Monroeville a granite bowlder, eight and one-half feet long and five feet in breadth, pro- jects four feet ten inches above the black mould of the prairie soil; others, somewhat smaller, are found here and there, and in places the surface is dotted with them. Careful examination revealed the fact that these bowlders, except in cases where they had been moved by human agency, rested upon the rock, or upon the clay or gravel underlying the ridge. Every fact thus far observed tends to the conclusion that all the bowlders were dropped before the sand ridge or prairie soil was formed. However, near the south- west corner of Berlin township, in a primitive forest, composed mainly of large oaks, a great number of bowlders was discovered resting upon the undisturbed vegetable mould.

Remains of other sand ridges than that described can be detected in other parts of the county. Be- tween Norwalk and Olena, on the line which sepa- rates Bronson and Hartland townships, the surface presents to the eye the appearance of a broad, level plain of rich sandy loam, but it rises imperceptibly to the height of two hundred and fifteen feet above the sand ridge of Norwalk, or three hundred and sixty feet above the lake. About one-half mile east of Olena, a long, sandy and gravelly ridge rises to the height of three hundred and ninety-five feet above the lake. Near the northeast corner of Hart- land township there are also the remains of another sand ridge, fifty feet lower than the last, which has suffered much from erosion, and is ent up by irregular valleys leading down to the west branch of Vermillion river, exposing the coarse drift below, with many large striated bowlders. In the western part of Fitchville township, a long, sandy ridge, trending , nearly north and south, rises in the highest parts to four hundred and twenty-five feet above the lake, rising ten to fifteen feet above the level land to the east, and twenty to twenty-five feet above that on the west.

In Peru township the bed of Huron river is about one hundred and thirty feet above the lake, the bluffs generally composed of modified drifts. These bluffs rise to a height of from one hundred and eighty to two hundred feet above the lake, and are modified by surface erosion.

At Greenfield Center the barometer marked an ele- vation of two hundred and ninety feet above the lake. The surface of most of the township is covered with irregular undulating hills of gravel and drift.

In Greenwich township the north and south center road. south of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis railroad, passes over clay lands at an

altitude of four hundred and eighty-five feet above the lake, presenting the appearance of a broad water plain, and resembling in all respects the heavy clay lands in northeastern Ohio, which are underlain by the Cuyahoga shales.

CUYAHOGA SHALES.

About one hundred feet of the lower part of the Cuyahoga shale underlie the southeastern part of the county. This formation is frequently exposed in the banks of the Vermillion river and its tributaries, where the harder layers are quarried for local use and furnish building stone of fair quality. The rock is a compact, fine grained sandstone, in rather thin strata, containing what the quarrymen call "turtle-backs." These show contorted lines of cleavage, which cause the rock to break up in rounded, flattish masses, bearing a rough resemblance to the animal which has given them this name. The dip of the strata is irregular. At the quarry worked by W. R. Starr, south of Clarksfield village, along the line bearing south sixty degrees east, the rock dips to the north eleven degrees. Fifteen rods north the dip is seven degrees in the opposite direction.

BEREA GRIT.

This important quarry rock covers much of the county, but its value is greatly impaired by local dis- turbances. At Jefferson's quarry, near the town line at the northeast corner of Townsend, on a long ridge running north and south, the surface of the Berea is two hundred and seventy-five feet above the lake; the dip is southwesterly seventeen degrees; the line of strike north sixty-seven degrees west. The upper layers only are exposed; these are thin, but strong, and less broken than in most places in the county, indicating that here good quarries could be opened. A half mile further north, the dip is fifteen degrees; the surface marked with glacial striæ, bearing north- east and southwest. At Mr. Milliman's quarry, near the northwest part of Townsend, the dip of the Berea is twenty degrees south, and south by southwest the stone is of good quality; glacial striæ northeast and southwest. East of the two last exposures, and on the east bank of the Vermillion, the surface of the Berea is twenty-five feet below the last. Fifteen feet of the rock are exposed in large, massive blocks, nearly horizontal, but dipping slightly in different directions. Near Plymouth village the Berea crops out on the banks of the stream, showing massive rock about twelve feet in thickness, nearly horizontal, and of good quality. At Edgar Bovier's quarry, just east of the village, the rock is in thin horizontal layers, becoming thicker as the opening is carried downward: color, grayish blue, many of the layers affording a sharp grindstone grit. Here, and at openings further north on the river, streaks of coaly matter, derived from plants, are not infrequent in the Berea. The rock is here unaffected by glacial action, but the dis- turbane becomes very marked further down the river.

HISTORY OF HURON AND ERIE COUNTIES, OHIO.

At G. Graham's quarry, in Greenfield township, the rock dips thirteen and a half degrees southwesterly, with the line of the strike south thirty-five degrees east, is in very even layers, all finely ripple-marked, some with the puzzling mammary surface, probably caused by the action of eddies where "two seas met" on the old ocean shore.

At Cole's quarry, one and one-half miles south- east of Norwalk, the Berea is only two hundred and five feet above the lake, and in its position and sur- roundings affords a remarkable illustration of the superficial disturbance which prevails over a large part of the county. The rock is in thin, evenly- bedded layers, dipping twenty-seven degrees south- easterly, the line of strike being twenty-two degrees east. Directly north some fifteen or twenty rods, and on the opposite side of a small stream, the black shale is in a position at the same level; the strata horizontal and nndisturbed. About two.rods north, and a little east of the quarry, the Bedford shales are exposed, dipping south about twenty- seven degrees north from the last, and on the opposite side of the stream, a bluff, twenty-five feet high, shows a mixture of Erie and Bedford shales. In the immediate neighborhood the Berea is exposed in several places, dipping in various directions, and varying from twenty to forty degrees. These dis- turbances have left the Berea here resting on the Cleveland shales, and have so broken up and crushed the strata as to greatly impair the value of the quar- ries in the county. In a few places, even where the rock is tilted up to quite a sharp angle, the strata are still entire, and excellent rock can be quarried. At many of the openings the broken, worthless rock largely exceeds that which is suitable for building purposes.

BEDFORD SHALES.

These are exposed only in the different branches of the Huron and Vermillion rivers. Where undis- turbed they range from forty to seventy-five feet in thickness, and consist of hard, fine grained sand rock in thin layers, alternating with thinner bands of argillaceons shales; the thicker strata of the sand rock are frequently composed of a mass of the pecu- liar contorted rock called "turtle-back," rendering it quite worthless. Sometimes, however, this forma- tion yields a fair building stone. In places where quite a heavy bed of the Berea constitutes the surface rock, these sholes are entirely wanting, the Berea resting upon the Cleveland shales.

CLEVELAND SHALES.

These have the ordinary characteristics of this formation, as described in the reports of the north- eastern counties of the State, differing materially only in two particulars. The deposit is thinner here, varying from fifteen to thirty-two feet at the points where measurements could be obtained. It also con- tains less carbonaceous matter and more iron, passing

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History of the Fire lands, comprising Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of the prominent men and pioneers, Part 6

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.) Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company Number of Pages: 726

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Cleveland, Ohio : Press of Leader Printing Company
Number of Pages: 726