Portage heritage; a history of Portage County, Ohio; its towns and townships and the men and women who have developed them; its life, institutions and biographies, facts and lore, Part 2

Author: Holm, James B
Publication date: 1957
Publisher: [Kent, O., Commercial Press inc.]
Number of Pages: 834

USA > Ohio > Portage County > Portage heritage; a history of Portage County, Ohio; its towns and townships and the men and women who have developed them; its life, institutions and biographies, facts and lore > Part 2

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

The Lowries united with the Ravenna Christian church in 1893, and Mr. Lowrie helped raise the building fund for the present church building.

In his work as carpenter and mover, Mr. Lowrie, with his brother, helped move many buildings, particularly in making way for the so-called Brice Line railroad just before this century began.

The Lowrie's celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 1951.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Lowrie are life members of the County Historical Society and are also members of the Summit County Historical Society, to which Mr. Lowrie has donated numerous relics.

Mr. and Mrs. Lowrie have been of great help in preparing this history. A great deal of their historical knowledge is included in its pages.

Mr. and Mrs. John A. Lowrie

RHYMES BY OUR PEOPLE

MY GARDEN

My garden, 'tis a thing of beauty, Made for all to see; But my garden holds a wealth of thoughts For you, and yes, for me.

This wonder spot of God and man, Besides its flowers and trees,

A sanctuary of repose has made For the soul of all of these.

For in my garden, day by day A miracle of man takes place, I find a partnership with God As life unfolds with grace.

Kind thoughts are cultivated here. The world's at peace with all;

For here, life's greatest things are grown,

Hope, love, and the Master's call.

Raymond H. Cheetham Kent, Ohio

A POET OF TALENT

In the early part of the present century, Ralph B. Heighton, of Pippin Lake showed considerable prom- ise as a poet. His poems appeared in a number of publications. One of them is given below:

BEYOND

Over the hill lies the Great Beyond, Where the sky and the dim woods meet. And thither away, with a longing fond My heart is yearning to turn my feet.

Somewhere afar in the future dim, O'er the horizon of Time's wide sea, Where sails appear o'er the distant rim Lies the undiscovered, the Great To Be.

Beyond the end of the rainbow's span Where that alone on swift wing's flown Shut off from the vision of mortal man Like the goal of the journey- the Great Unknown.

CHAWIN' SWEET CORN OFF THE COB

When the summer shine is shinin' And good friends you'd like to meet, Why not just come up to our house And I'll set you out a treat.

When the corn is nice and milky And we've butter by the gob, Say, you just come up to our house, And chaw sweet corn off the cob.

Even if you have store teeth, You can do a fair, good job, Let the butter run and drizzle While you chaw corn off the cob.

You go up by fours achawin', Slitherin' back by threes, nabob. Let the juice and butter drizzle, Chawin' sweet corn off the cob.

If you're perlite, slick and dainty And a fraid you'll be a slob, Wal-don't come up to our house To chaw sweet corn off the cob.

You must hold it by two gadgets? I can hold mine in my paws, You must nip so still and dainty, I like mine in juicy chaws.

Then I'll go zippin' up by four rows, And the butter on I'll daub, There's nothin' I like better than Chawin' sweet corn off the cob.

A.M.C. August 28, 1949.

NO WELCOME THERE

The rhymes below are taken from verse written by Miss Lina C. Hall, of Garrettsville, entitled "Orchard Hill." She is a native of Charlestown. The verses refer to the coming of the arsenal.

The dear old home is torn away! In thought I enter in

And see again the quaint, big rooms

Where life and love have been.

That dear old home, so brave and strong, Upon the hilltop fair, To "igloos" strange have given place, And now-no welcome there.

CHAPTER I Our First Citizens

BY PHILLIP R. SHRIVER

Where should one begin the story of Portage county? Some might argue that the only proper place to start is at that point, little more than a century and a half ago, when the first white settlers arrived to break the soil, clear the forests, and build their cabins. Yet to do so would be to ignore a rich and romantic chapter of human habitation of this area, one extending back over more than perhaps four thousand years, an era which pales in compari- son the relatively brief period of white settlement. To ignore the Indian in- habitants of this area would be to omit a very vital part of our knowledge and appreciation of the progress that man has made here over the centuries. Even the name of our county-Portage -connoting the use by "red men" of the trail between the rivers - bears testimony to the impact of the Indian. What rivers? Why, primarily the Cuy- ahoga and Tuscarawas, of course, though a trail also connected the form- er with the Mahoning. Named by whom? By Indians.

A WILD COUNTRY

As we live in our thriving villages and crowded cities, work in our fac- tories, shops, or schools, or on our well-tilled farms, and travel along our busy highways, it is difficult for us to appreciate that a comparatively short expanse of time ago all this was vastly different. The Portage area then was blanketed with a dense stand of oak,

maple, chestnut, and hickory. Deer, elk, the wildcat, the panther, the wolf, bear, the wild turkey, and a myriad other forms of animal and bird life abounded in these forests, while the streams and lakes teemed with fish of a hundred species.

Because it had food and water in abundance, the Portage area was to be inhabited over the centuries by a succession of groups representing a number of cultures, even though it was too far north to ever be densely populated by primitive peoples. These groups can be divided into two princi- pal sub-divisions-prehistoric and his- toric-the dividing line representing contact with the first white explorers and settlers. Among the prehistoric peoples living within this county, rep- resentative cultures were the Archaic, Adena, Hopewell, and Whittlesey Foc- us, these being names given them by archaeologists of the twentieth cen- tury.

HOW THEY LIVED

We can only conjecture as to the possibility of the presence in Portage county some four thousand or more years ago of "Archaic Man," a river- valley-dweller largely subsisting on shellfish, small game, and nuts. A de- scendant of Asiatic migrants, Archaic Man has left only the faintest traces in Ohio. From what little has been found we can conclude that he was short in Stature, round-headed, fashioned his

PORTAGE HERITAGE

Relics taken from Indian mound on George Towner property at Pippin Lake, 1932.

tools and ornaments from flint, bone, and shell, and was not too clean in his personal habits. The latter is a con- clusion drawn from his predilection for living on top of his own refuse heaps or "shell middens."

Some time later, from approximate- ly 800 B.C. to 700 A.D., Ohio was peo- pled by a much more advanced group, since named "Adena." Highly artistic in carving stone and bone and shaping copper and mica into ornaments, the Adena people were the first of the so- called "Mound-builders" to inhabit this area. Larger than Archaic Man and flat-headed from childhood on through purposeful deformation of the skull, the Adena were the first to make pottery, practised simple agri- culture (cultivating pumpkins and probably squash), and lived in circu-

lar, bark-covered houses often thirty or more feet in diameter. They are, perhaps, best identified by their large, cone-shaped mounds heaped over the dead, the Miamisburg Mound near Dayton being the outstanding ex- ample. Here in Portage county an Adena site was excavated in July, 1955, on the south shore of Lake Rock- well, near the old bed of the Cuyahoga River. Beautiful, leaf-shaped "Adena" knives of blue-tan Flint Ridge chalce- dony were unearthed as was a perfect- ly-shaped black hematite cone.

HAD MANY ACTIVITIES Most advanced of all the prehistoric peoples in this area (and in many re-

1. The dates cited here are the result of the most recent radiocarbon tests, according to Dr. Raymond S. Baby, Ohio State Archaeologist, in a letter to the author, October 3, 1955.

PORTAGE HERITAGE

spects in the entire area north of Mex- ico) were the "Hopewell," inhabiting Ohio from approximately 300 A.D. to 1200 A.D. They are noted for their geometric earthworks, such as circles, rectangles, and crescents, outstanding examples of which can be found at Newark. They are also noted for their groups of mounds, such as at Mound City near Chillicothe, and for their elaborate-walled hill-top enclosures or "forts" such as Fort Ancient near Le- banon. The Hopewell, sometimes called the "Greeks of Ohio's ancient world," were excellent craftsmen in stone, copper, mica, bone, wood, and shell, and were skilled in the manu- facture of highly decorated and finely made pottery. Heavy users of tobacco, they smoked pipes of stone often handsomely carved in the effigies of

the birds and animals with which they had contact. We recognize them as an agricultural people, cultivating maize, squash, beans, and tobacco in large fields about their villages. We admire them for their skill in weaving gar- ments and baskets from the fibers of grasses and trees. And we are particu- larly impressed with their extensive trade relations with tribes far removed from this region. From the Lake Su- perior region they procured their cop- per and silver. They obtained their obsidian (or volcanic glass) from the Rocky Mountains, mica from the Car- olinas, lead from Illinois, and sea shells from the Gulf of Mexico.

BURIALS ALONG LAKES

Though Portage county is not rich- ly endowed with Hopewell sites, a

Indian mound opened at Lake Rockwell in 1955. Here Dr. Phillip R. Shriver and George B. Towner display "Adena" knives unearthed there.

PORTAGE HERITAGE

significant one was excavated in the summer of 1932 on the George Town- er property on the south shore of Pip- pin Lake. There eleven burials were uncovered on the summit of a lofty hill overlooking the lake. Copper beads, slate ornaments, large sheets of worked mica, graphite, projectile points, and a quantity of beautiful flake knives of Flint Ridge material were unearthed, testifying as to the extensive trade relations of this primi- tive people living in this county.

What happened to the Hopewell can only be conjectured. War, disease, assimilation by inferiors-the answer as to their disappearance may never be known. What followed constituted a repudiation of the Darwinian theory in this area-devolution, not evolu- tion. For the last of the prehistoric groups in the Portage region, that known as the "Whittlesey Focus," dat- ing from approximately 1300 A.D. to 1650 A.D., was not advanced much beyond the condition of the savages found by the first white arrivals. In- deed, there is considerable archaeo- logical evidence to support the theory that these Indians and the historic Eries or Cat Nation were one and the same. If so, this would account for their disappearance from this area in mid-seventeenth century, for the French Jesuit missionaries recorded the virtual extermination of the Eries by the Iroquois warriors from the New York area in the 1650's. Agricul-

tural and sedentary, makers of pottery and tools vastly inferior to that of the Hopewell, the Whittlesey Focus people were concentrated primarily along the south shore of Lake Erie and along the rivers flowing into it, including the Cuyahoga. Their vil- lages were usually situated on bluffs and were fortified by earthen-support- ed wooden stockades surrounded by a ditch. Their houses were dome-shaped huts with walls made of saplings cov- ered with bark or skins. Unlike the Mound-builders, they buried their dead in shallow, circular or rectangu- lar graves.

BURIAL MOUNDS NUMEROUS

Though Portage county is not as richly endowed with prehistoric earth- works as the counties one hundred to one hundred fifty miles to the south and west, nonetheless, more than thir- ty such sites have been found within its borders. At least eighteen mounds have been located in Mantua, Hiram, Nelson, Streetsboro, Franklin, Charles- town, Edinburg, and Palmyra town- ships. Village sites have been discover- ed in Nelson, Streetsboro, Franklin, and Palmyra, while burials and ceme- teries have been found in Hiram, Nel- son, Streetsboro, Shalersville, Wind- ham, Paris, Palmyra, and Edinburg. Thus, one cannot travel far in this county without being near at least one of these visible reminders of prehis- toric civilizations.

The pattern of settlement in Portage County was not from the center outward. First land owners bought in large lots and later re-sold it in scattered places so that other settlers might be attracted. The idea was to keep sales widely scattered. Not until the settlers "took root" did the "centers" or towns emerge.

PORTAGE HERITAGE

HOW TRAILS WERE MADE

Following the extermination of the Eries in the 1650's, this area was un- inhabited for many years. Then, by the mid-eighteenth century, groups of "historic" Indians-those having con- tact with white men-began to move in from north, east, south, and west to fill in the vacuum. Of these, the most numerous in Ohio were the Miamis, Shawnees, Wyandots, and Delawares, hunting and war parties of which must certainly have made frequent camps along the several heavily-travel- ed trails criss-crossing through the Portage region. Though never very populous, several other tribes had vil- lages in this area. Included among these were the Senecas, whose village was situated near the Cuyahoga River in southeastern Streetsboro Township; the Ottawas, who had a village near the mouth of the Little Cuyahoga; the Chippewas, whose main camp was lo- cated at Chippewa Lake in Medina County but who occupied portions of this county during the summer when they hunted; the Onondagas and Onei- das, who had a village a mile to the west of Palmyra Center and another in Aurora; and the Cayugas, who fre- quently made camp in the area about Hiram and Nelson Ledges. Living in wigwams, hunting and fishing for food, their wants were few. Possessing none of the talents of art and sculp- ture, of metalworking and weaving of the Mound-builders, these "historic" Indians represented a marked retro- gression from the level of culture of their predecessors. Yet they were a happy, contented lot. Christian Cack- ler in his "Recollections of an Old Set-

"Standing Rock" sits in the Cuyahoga River above Kent today as it has for hundreds of years. It was a spot known to the Indians who held their councils there.

tler" describes the headquarters of Big Son, the Seneca chief at Streetsboro, in the following words:

INDIANS HAPPY LIFE

"I have been there a great many times when they lived there, and if they had anything they could bestow upon you in the way of eatables, it was as free as the water. They thought it was a privilege to give, for they thought it was a token of friendship, and if they gave one, they gave all that were present. Their wig- wam was about twenty-five feet long or more, and they had their fire through the middle, and had it so constructed as to leave room for a tier of them to lie down on each side of the fire, so as to have their feet to the fire, for they lay on their skins and furs, and covered over with their blankets. They had a space left open on the ridge of their camp to let the smoke pass out. They had their wigwam thatched with bark, so that it was tight and warm, and had a door in each end, so that they could haul in their wood without much chopping. They lay there as warm and comfortable as a man in his palace. The Seneca Chief used to gather in all his family connec- tions and lay there through the winter.

PORTAGE HERITAGE

Divers Tavern in Deerfield was the scene of the shooting of Daniel Diver in 1806, following trouble over a horse trade. This incident was the only serious incident between whites and Indians in early Portage County.

And they would kill their meat before the hardest weather commenced, so they would not be compelled to go out in bad weather to get their living. In the Spring they would scatter over their hunting grounds, each family by them- selves, and build their wigwams for the summer. There were all sorts of game all around them . .. they were as careful of their game as we are of our cattle; they would kill nothing unless wanted for present use ... They had nothing to vex or perplex, or to disturb the mind. They gave no thought for the morrow, but let every day provide for itself. They had no government expenses, no taxes to pay, no jails to build, no locks to buy to secure their property, which was always secure, if they put it out of reach of the dogs and wolves. They meant to make honor and honesty their rule of life, and when they left their camps, they set up sticks as a signal that there was nobody at home, and everything was secure . . .

In the summer they greased them- selves where their clothing does not cover their skin, so as to prevent gnats and mosquitos from biting them, and often paint their faces in streaks. That denotes

peace and friendship. They love whiskey, and get drunk often."

While the Indians were friendly and hospitable to the whites when Cackler came into the area in 1804, it had not always been that way. Indeed, not many years before, in 1780, Port- age county was the scene of as thrill- ing and hair-raising an episode as you can find in the histories of few other places. That was the well-known story of the Indian scout, Captain Samuel Brady, his escape from and pursuit by a howling band of Ottawas and Wyan- dots, and his famed leap across the Cuyahoga River, at a location in what is now down-town Kent.

SIGN OFF RIGHTS

The incident, which has been im- mortalized by a host of place-names throughout the county, was but part of the much broader story of the Rev- olutionary War in the West, between the British and their Indian allies on the one hand and the American frontiersmen on the other. Though the British concluded the Treaty of Paris with the Americans in 1783, thus ac- knowledging this nation's independ- ence, peace did not finally come be- tween red men and white in this area until the signing of the Treaty of Fort McIntosh in January, 1785, by which the Indians agreed to permit white settlement east of the Cuyahoga. Yet continued depradations on both sides made this treaty a worthless scrap of paper, real peace not being effected until 1795 at the Treaty of Greene Ville, following General Mad An- thony Wayne's smashing victory over the tribesmen in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. By this latter treaty the area

PORTAGE HERITAGE

ASH TIBULA

CEALIÇA

COSTINITY

LORAMIN COUN

: 26: 4

COUNTY

PORTAGE

TROX COUNTY

LINNÁCOUNTY

TRUMBULL

ER IEMON YOKEY

FIRELANDS

This map was made in 1834 by Delia Hanchett by tracing outlines over an official map made in 1829. Portage County then included most of Summit and other counties were yet unformed. This map is an oddity as names of counties were printed in after outlines were sketched. When this was done an error was made by transposing the names of Cuyahoga and Lorain counties.

east of the Cuyahoga was again guar- anteed to the whites, but this time the guarantee was observed. White settlers began to come into this county in the months that followed, knowing that their lives were safe. One by one com- munities began to spring up.

Yet old enmities could not be en- tirely forgotten. Isolated incidents in- volving clashes between the races con- tinued for a decade, until the last of the red men had vanished. One such was the quarrel between Captain De- laun Mills, one of the first settlers of

Nelson Township, and Big Cayuga, the chief of a band of Cayugas that frequently camped in or near the Ledges. The quarrel ended with the slaying of Big Cayuga in 1803, an event which threatened for a time to precipitate a scalping raid on local residents. Another incident was the shooting of Daniel Diver in 1806 by Mohawk, one of the sons of the Seneca chief Big Son, in revenge for a bad trade made by Diver with another Seneca brave, Nickshaw, brother-in- law of Mohawk. This story is related

Rattlesnakes, once so numerous in Portage County, are still occasionally found. As late as 1925, more than 25 were killed in an Atwater swamp. In 1914 colonies of beavers were discovered in Freedom and Franklin townships.

PORTAGE HERITAGE

by Christian Cackler in another chap- ter.

Today, nearly a century and a half later, we find a number of vestiges of the Indian's presence about us. The mounds and village sites afore-men- tioned; the great Standing Rock in the Cuyahoga north of Kent (where the Indian chiefs used to hold their coun- cils in complete secrecy); the trails worn deep in the soil by moccasined feet over the centuries (such as the Mahoning Trail, the Chagrin Trail,

the Watershed Trail, and the Grand River Trail) which criss-crossed this county and form today the course for many of our roadways; the arrow- heads, spear and knife points, toma- hawk heads, and war clubs that have been found here on nearly every farm and are still occasionally being found to give a thrill to the discoverer-all these constitute a tangible bridge con- necting this generation with those of bygone civilizations over the stream of four thousand years of human history in the Portage area.

The Daniel Boone of Portage

Though Capt. Sam. Brady had quite a reputation as an Indian fighter, he did not belong in Portage County. But the county did have one bona fide In- dian fighter who has been pretty much forgotten. He was Capt. Delaun Mills of Nelson, of whose prowess many tales were once heard-some true and some doubtful. It was always said of him that when killing Indians, or intent on doing so, his face wore a most beautiful smile. Probably he never killed as many Indians as credit- ed with, but he did have some thrill- ing encounters. In a letter written in 1879 by his son Urial, who then lived in Illinois, some of his exploits are outlined. The letter says; "About 1803 an Indian got mad at my father and said he would kill him. Father was in the habit of hunting through the fall. One day, in crossing a trail made in the snow the day before, he found the track of an Indian following him; this

put him on his guard. He soon saw the Indian. They both sheltered them- selves behind trees. Father put his hat on his gun stock and stuck it out so that the Indian could see it. The In- dian shot a hole through the hat, and when it fell he ran forward toward father with his tomahawk in his hand. Father then stepped from behind the tree, shot him and buried him. He told my mother and she told me. About the same time the Indians were in camp near the cranberry marsh, afterward owned by Benjamin Stow, Asahel Mills was hunting cattle and came past their camp. An Indian snap- ped a gun at him but the Indian's squaw took the gun away from him. Asahel came home badly scared and told his story. We soon saw the In- dians coming, painted for war; they came into the house. They all shook hands with father but the last, who uttered an oath and seized him by the

Of the Portage County Indians, still remembered in Aurora are chiefs Sangoman and Tasham, who had tepees along Aurora Pond.

PORTAGE HERITAGE

The Lamentations of Bigson

The Diver shooting by the Indians in Deerfield in 1807 is now considered an isolated affair but it had its bitter repercussions and the behavior of the whites brought no credit to them. After the shooting, whites were roused and converged on the Indian camp in the dead of winter, to capture the alleged assailant or anyone connected with him. Chief Bigson and two of his sons, from the Streetsboro camp, were arrested and charged with participation. It was in the dead of winter and the white captors treated them with severity. The Indians were forced to walk through the snow barefoot. Big- son's feet were frozen and cut. His captors refused to let him bind his feet. At Warren, where a trial was later held, Bigson and others were exonerated by white man's law, but for some reason remained there and often sat in the sun along the Mahoning river and poured out their pitiful story, of the wrongs done them.

Cornelius Feather, writing in the Papers of the Ashtabula County Historical Society, says he saw these Indians there, remarking;

"It was heart rending to visit this group of human misery and hear their lamentations. The poor Indians were not confined, for they could not run away. This narrator has seen this old, frost crippled chief, Bigson, who had almost been frozen to death, sitting with the others on the banks of the Mahoning, and heard him, in the Indian tongue, with deep touching emotions, in the highest strain of his native oratory, addressing his companions in misery-speaking the language of his heart, pointing to the rising, then the setting sun, to the North, to the South, until sobs choked his utterance and tears fol- lowed tears down his sorrow worn cheeks."

throat. Father caught him by the shoulders, jerked him off the floor and swung him around. The calves of his legs hit the sharp leg of a heavy table. He then dragged the Indian out- doors, took him by the hair and pounded his head on a big rock and left him. The Indians scarified the bruised parts by cutting the skin into strips about an inch wide. They then tied a blanket around him, put a pole through the blanket, put the pole on their shoulders and carried him to their camp. They said that if he died they would kill father. While he was confined, they shot Diver in Deerfield. This created quite an excitement and the Indians all left for Sandusky, leav- ing the crippled one in camp. Some time later, when father was away, he came to the house in the dusk of the evening and asked if he could stay. Mother told him he could. She did not sleep that night, believing he had

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Portage heritage; a history of Portage County, Ohio; its towns and townships and the men and women who have developed them; its life, institutions and biographies, facts and lore, Part 2

Author: Holm, James B Publication date: 1957 Publisher: [Kent, O., Commercial Press inc.] Number of Pages: 834

Author: Holm, James B
Publication date: 1957
Publisher: [Kent, O., Commercial Press inc.]
Number of Pages: 834