USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume I > Part 14
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SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
ning, Medina, Portage, Summit, and Trumbull Counties. 6. HOCKING VALLEY, consisting of Athens, Fairfield, Gallia, Hocking, Lawrence, Meigs, Perry, and Vinton Counties. 7. The Ohio River counties, not belonging to any river system other than the Ohio, are Belmont, Columbiana, Jefferson, and Monroe Counties. The aggregate amount of farinaceous food produced annually by Ohio is more to the square mile than by any other State in the Union. She raises more grain annually than ten of the old States, and more than half of the quantity raised by France or Great Britain. In 1832, a period of profound peace, according to McGregor's statistics of nations of Europe, Great Britain grew 2, 190 bushels to each square mile, Austria 1,422, France 1,080, and in the same year Ohio raised 3,750. Combining the countries Great Britain, Austria, and France, we find that they had 594,785 square miles, and produced in that year 863, 147, 300 bushels of grain, which was, at that time, 1,450 bushels per square mile, and ten bushels to each one of their population. Ohio had 3,750 bushels to the square mile, and fifty bush- els to each one of her population, and thus there was five times as much grain raised in Ohio in propor- tion to the people, as in these great countries of Europe.
The general census reports for 1880 have not been completed, but in 1870 Ohio had 8,818,000 do. mestic animals ; Illinois, 6,925,000 ; New York, 5,283,000; Pennsylvania, 4,493,000, and other States less. The proportion to population in these States was: In Ohio to each person, 3.3 ; Illinois, 2.7; New York, 1.2; Pennsylvania, 1.2. By McGregor's statistics, the proportion of domestic animals in Europe were, in Great Britain, 2.44 to each person ; in Russia, 2.00; in France, 1.50; in Prussia, 1.02 ; in Austria, 1.00. From this it will be seen that the proportion in Great Britain is only two-thirds that of Ohio; in France, one-half; and Austria and Prussia, only one third. It may be said that, in the course of civilization, the number of animals diminish as the density of population increases, and that, therefore, this result might have been expected in the old countries of Europe. But this does not apply to Russia or Germany, still less to other States in this country. Russia in Europe has not more than half the density of population that Ohio has. Austria and Russia have less than 150 to the square mile. In fact, the whole of the north of Europe in population is less dense than is the State of Ohio, and still less are the States of Illinois and Missouri, west of Ohio. Then, therefore, it is plain there must be other causes to produce the proportion of domestic animals to man shown by Ohio, and we may find them in the fact that Ohio produces one fifth of all the wool, one-seventh of all the cheese, one-eighth of all the corn, and one-tenth of all the wheat produced in the United States and Territories; and yet Ohio has but one-fourteenth part of the population and one-eightieth part of the surface of the country:
Taking a commercial view of the facts, and we find Ohio grows five times as much grain per square mile as is grown by Great Britain, France, and Austria together. After allowing for the difference of living as known to the working people of the European and American countries, at least two-thirds of the food and grain of Ohio are a surplus beyond the necessities of life, and therefore so much in the commercial balance of exports. This corresponds with the fact that in the shape of grain, meat, and dairy products, which are exportable, this surplus is constantly moved to the Atlantic States, and thence to Europe. The money value of this exported product is equal to $100,000,000 per annum, and to a solid capital of $1,500,000,000 after the annual sustenance of the people has been taken out of the annual crop.
To show still further the growth and important position of the State, a brief reference to its legis- lation will be of service. We take two periods of State history for comparison. The sixty-third Gen- eral Assembly of Ohio adjourned on the 23d of June, 1879. It had, by the calendar, occupied one hundred and sixty-eight days, lacking only thirteen days of six calendar months. During its regular and adjourned sessions nearly five hundred bills were introduced-three hundred and ninety-one in the Senate and eighty-five in the House. At the adjourned session one hundred and six general laws and one hundred and seventy-one local laws were passed, and forty-nine joint resolutions adopted. In con- tradistinction to this, we may state that the first General Assembly of Ohio was convened March Ist, 1803, and adjourned on the 16th of the following April. It passed twenty four laws, all of a general character, and all absolutely necessary for the organization of the State government. The sessions of the Legislature are in name biennial, but in fact annual; that is, though there is only one authorized session of any Legislature elected, it has an adjourned session, in which new bills may be introduced and enacted into laws. The business of the State requires this. Local legislation, in a community like ours,
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SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
is constantly needed; and the interests of the public are superior to the private views of theorists. When the constitution was adopted, visionaries supposed that the law-making power might meet only once in two years ; practical men require it to sit annually, and not to contract its session to a few days.
The Governors of Ohio, from the organization of the State in 1802, have been Edward Tiffin, then elected, re-elected in 1804 and 1806, and resigning in March, 1807 ; after which Thomas Kirker, the Speaker of the Senate, served as acting Governor until the inauguration of Samuel Huntington, elected in 1808. In 1807 an election took place, the candidates being Return J. Meigs, of Marietta, and Na- thaniel Massie, of Chillicothe, and the former was elected ; but in consequence of his former residence in Louisiana, and more recent in Michigan, in the service of the United States, the Ohio Senate declared him ineligible, while they did not seat his opponent. Return J. Meigs was again elected in 1810, and re elected in 1812. In 1813 he resigned to become Postmaster-general, and the Speaker of the Senate, Othniel Looker, became acting Governor until the inauguration, in 1814, of Thomas Worthington, who was re-elected in 1816. He was succeeded by Ethan Allen Brown, elected in 1818, and re-elected in 1820. He was succeeded by Jeremiah Morrow, elected in 1822, and re-elected in 1824; and succeeded by Allen Trimble, elected in 1826 and re-elected in 1828. He was succeeded by Duncan McArthur, elected in 1830, and who served one term only, to be succeeded by Robert Lucas, elected in 1832 and re-elected in 1834. He was succeeded by Joseph Vance, elected in 1836, serving but one term, and was succeeded by Wilson Shannon, who, elected in 1838, was succeeded by Thomas Corwin, elected in 1840. The candidates in the election of 1842 were those last named, and Wilson Shannon was elected. He resigned in 1843 to become United States Minister to Mexico, and Thomas W. Bartley, as Speaker of the Senate, became acting Governor until the inauguration of his father, Mordecai Bartley, elected in 1844. The latter was succeeded by William Bebb, elected in 1846, and he by Seabury Ford, who served but one term, and was succeeded by Reuben Wood, elected in 1850 and re-elected in 1852. In 1853 he resigned to become United States Minister to Chili. William Medill, as the first incumbent of . the office, was elected Lieutenant-governor in 1852, and, on the resignation of Governor Wood, became acting Governor until his own election as such in 1853, the first under the new constitution, and by which instrument the election of Governor, etc., was changed from the even to the odd numbered years. He served one term as Governor elect, and was succeeded by Salmon P. Chase, elected in 1855 and re-elected in 1857. In 1859 William Dennison was elected, and, the War of the Rebellion beginning in the second year of his term, he was known as the " first war Governor." He was succeeded by David Tod, elected in 1861, and the latter by John Brough, elected by one hundred thousand votes over Val- landigham in 1863, and who died in August, 1865. He was succeeded by Lieutenant-governor Charles Anderson, who became acting Governor until the inauguration of Jacob D. Cox, elected in 1865, and who served but one term. In 1867 Rutherford B. Hayes was elected, and re-elected in 1869. Having served two terms, he was succeeded by Edward F. Noyes, elected in 1871, and he by William Allen, of Chillicothe, elected in 1873. In 1875 Rutherford B. Hayes was again elected, with Thomas L. Young, of Cincinnati, as Lieutenant-governor; but the former having, in 1876, been elected to the Presidency of the United States, resigned his office of Governor in February, 1877, when the latter became acting Governor of Ohio, and served as such until relieved by his successor, Richard M. Bishop, elected in 1877, and inaugurated January 15th, 1878. In 1880 Charles Foster, of Seneca County, was elected Governor, and served one term, when he was re-elected, and is now filling out his second term.
By the foregoing account of the Governors, it will be observed that, while there have been, since the organization of the State, forty-two elections for Governor, but twenty-seven different persons have been elected. Of these, three were elected each three times, and nine elected each twice. Politically, Ohio has always been nearly equally divided between the two leading parties, which have alternately
administered the government. The first contests at the polls were those between the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans ; then those between the Democrats and the Whigs; and later between the Democrats and the Republicans. Minor parties have occasionally held the balance of power, as when the votes of the Free-soilers, added to those of the Democrats in the Ohio Legislature, elected Salmon P. Chase, the first Abolition Senator from this State, against a plurality of Whig votes. However much these parties may disagree in their methods of conducting the affairs of the State or the nation, we must accord to them an honest purpose to secure the greatest good to the greatest number. The
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SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF OHIO.
party in power, as well as the party defeated, has the public weal in view; and though individuals of both may, through partisan politics, seek personal emolument, they can not long stand opposed to the best public opinion. It is not safe for the servant of the people to " feather his own nest " at their expense. They are willing to pay him well for his services; but his hands must be clean of bribes and of pelf. Ever "the wheel comes full circle," and they who occupy its pinnacle go to the bottom. Frequent revolutions in politics serve to purge the common weal. The national life is in no danger of stagnation so long as there are so many appeals to the people at the polls.
In considering the civil history of our State, and tracing its progress from its first permanent settle- ment in 1788 to the present time, we are led to inquire into the causes of its rapid growth and pros- perity. These are due, first, to its geographical position. It is in the center of the great thoroughfares from the lakes to the gulf, and from ocean to ocean. All the chief lines of travel extend through its domain, and most of the traffic between the East and the West passes through its borders. A great part of the Northern wheat, flour, cured meats, and manufactured articles goes South by way of Ohio, while the cotton and sugar and tropical fruits of the South come to Ohio by the great Cincinnati South- ern Railroad and the river boats. From Cincinnati as a center these are distributed throughout the States adjoining, and even transported to more distant ones.
In the next place, the climate is favorable. We have neither the long-continued cold of arctic Winters nor the fierce heats of the torrid regions, and yet we have nearly the extremes of both. Though so variable is the temperature, and the changes from one degree to another are so rapid, the public health is not endangered. The greatest heat and the greatest cold continue not long, and the average temperature remains about the same from year to year. The cutting away of the timber, the draining of the swamps, and the exposing of large tracts of ground to the sun have served to dry up much of the standing water, which, in earlier years of our history, produced annual attacks of bilious fever among the settlers, especially in bottom lands. The type of diseases has changed, nor is the heroic treatment so much demanded. With the clearing of the soil, and subjecting it to cultivation, malarious influences have been overcome, and the medical practice is of a milder form than it was half a century ago.
In the third place, we note the fertility of the soil. We have already, in referring to our agricul- tural resources, given some idea of the richness of our land, and there is very little of third-rate quality, while very much is first-rate. It was by these terms that the pioneer surveyors designated the character of the soil, as being good or bad. The medium quality was second-rate, but such as cultivation could improve. And Ohio, especially the Miami country, is noted throughout all the Northern and Western States for this very thing. Years ago an Ohio traveler in one of the new Territories beyond the Missis- sippi was asked from what place he had come. Upon his replying. "From the garden-spot of the Union," "O then," returned the questioner, "you are from the Miami Valley !" The first emigrants who crossed the Allegheny Mountains were captivated with the pleasing prospect which Ohio afforded.
These, however, are only material advantages. The exclusion of slavery by the ordinance estab. lishing the Territory, and the extension of the right of suffrage by the State Constitution were addi- tional inducements to the early settlers. Here every man was his own master. Neither property nor education was required as a qualification for a vote. Religious tests were not imposed, and the greatest freedom consistent with the safety of society was allowed. But though religious tests and the ability to read have never been made the basis of citizenship, the State has at no time been indifferent to them. The first settlers were educated and God-fearing men. They took care, as we have already stated, to establish schools and to plant Churches. They fostered the best elements of civilization, and, though establishing no form of religious faith, they recognized Christianity, and based their legislation upon Christian principles. The institutions of the State have multiplied as the necessities of society demanded. If the earliest was the county jail, the crowning glory of the government is the hospital and the asylum- for the criminal classes, the refuge, the work-house, the reform-school, and the penitentiary; for the feeble and helpless, the infirmary, eleemosynary homes, and sanitariums. There is only one State- prison, but there are three State-asylums for the insane, a home for veteran and disabled soldiers, an orphanage for the children of sailors and soldiers, institutions for the blind, the deaf and dumb, and the idiotic, and refuges for neglected boys and girls. Nearly all the counties have infirmaries; several of the cities have houses for the friendless, children's homes, and abodes for aged men and women; in IO
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many parts of the State are free public hospitals for the sick and injured, and some private ones, cared for by religious denominations, and supported by the charities of the pious.
There are, besides the public and private schools for the instruction of the young, other institutions of a literary, scientific, and artistic character. Some of the large cities have museums of natural history and galleries of art. Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, Fremont, and other cities have endowed libraries, and the first-named city has a music hall, second to none for acoustic properties, with the third largest organ in the world. Connected with this hall are buildings erected expressly for exposition purposes, where for ten years have been held the largest exhibitions of art and industry in the West. In scientific apparatus and in collections of paintings, sculptures and artistic works, antiquities, objects of natural history and curiosities, rare books, pictures, and manuscripts, Ohio stands among the foremost. Various societies have been instituted, both of a private and public character, some for benevolent, some for scientific, some for literary, and some for political purposes. Under the care and influence of associated charity the poor have been relieved and cruelty to animals and children has been abated. Institutes of art, mechanics, medicine, and surgery have been founded, lectures have been established, and Christian associations have been organized, both of men and women. Bethels for boatmen have been erected, both on the river and the lake, and permanent funds contributed for their support; "friendly inns," as they are named, have been opened by the benevolent for the supply of hot coffee and food, with lodging, to strangers who are too poor to pay hotel bills-to say nothing of the noble charities which have been heretofore given by her citizens, and of those which have been bestowed within the last five years for the sufferers from yellow fever in the South, from famines in Kansas, from forest fires in Mich- igan in 1881, and from floods on the Ohio, the Cuyahoga, the Maumee, and other rivers, in 1882 and 1883.
Here are denizens from every clime and of every tongue. The Ohio citizen is the product of many races. Saxon and Kelt predominate, though Mongol and African, Malay and Indian also intermingle. But in this admixture of bloods the American type everywhere prevails. Foreigners settling in our country rapidly assimilate in respect of our language, customs, and laws; and though the parents may not easily shake off old-world prejudices, their children adopt the new ideas. The lesson of man's unity has been well learned, and the State has always welcomed those who come from abroad to assist in building its mighty fabric. With the progress of events it removed from its statute-books the laws which excluded black witnesses from the courts; it bade establish schools for colored children ; it put the ballot into the hands of the negro, and has admitted him to its legislative councils. Receiving but little aid from the general government, Ohio has won an eminent position in the sisterhood of States. It has given to the nation three Presidents and several justices of the Supreme Court; it has more than once determined the general elections, so that the belief has arisen, "As goes Ohio, so goes the Union ;" it has upheld with patriotic ardor the integrity of the republic, and has steadily maintained the supremacy of law. And not without blood and treasure uncounted have these results been achieved. Tanta molis erat condere gentem !
BIOGRAPHICAL
CYCLOPEDIA AND PORTRAIT GALLERY
OF
REPRESENTATIVE MEN
OF THE
STATE OF OHIO.
GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM, was descended, on his father's side, from a Puritan family, his ancestors coming from Chester, England, to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, as early as 1630. In the maternal line he inherited Huguenot blood. His parents emigrated to Ohio at an early day, and were married February 3d, 1820, when the groom was only a little over twenty years of age, and the bride (Eliza Ballou) was eighteen. The young couple immediately went to New- burg, Cuyahoga County, and began life in a small log-cabin, on a new farm of eighty acres. Five children (three sons and two daughters) were the fruit of this marriage, of whom the future President was the youngest. One of the sons died in infancy. The father, Abram Garfield, worked his farm until 1826, and then took a contract to construct three miles of the Ohio Canal. For this purpose he removed to New Philadelphia, where he spent three years. In January, 1830, he went to Orange Township, Cuyahoga County, where his half-brother, Amos Boynton, had settled, and contracted for the purchase of eighty acres of land. The dwelling of Abram Garfield was a cabin of logs, with only one room, and a high loft reached by a ladder, where the beds were made for the older children. In this cabin James A. Garfield was born, November 19th, 1831. The father worked hard to clear his land, and to plant and gather his crops. He fenced his fields, planted an orchard, built a barn, and made many improve- ments upon his place, when death suddenly removed him from his family. In May, 1833, a fire broke out in the woods, and Mr. Garfield, after heating his blood and exerting his strength to keep the flames from his fences and buildings, sat down to rest in a cold wind, which soon chilled him, and he was seized with a violent soreness of the throat. The country physician who was called did not understand the ·. case, and it terminated fatally. Just before he died, he said to his wife, "Eliza, I have planted four saplings in these
woods ; I leave them to your care." James was then only a year and a half old. His mother determined to make an effort to keep the family together, and Thomas, her oldest son, became the main prop of the house. He was a brave, affectionate, industrious boy, strong of frame, and devoted to his mother and the younger children. Fifty acres of the farm were sold to pay the debts, and on the remaining thirty Mrs. Garfield managed, with the closest economy, to rear her family. Thomas did not marry until he was thirty, when his brother James had obtaincd an education, and the load of poverty had been lifted from his mother. He now resides in Michigan, and his sisters (both married) reside in Solon, Ohio. Mr. and Mrs. Garfield, soon after their marriage, be- came members of the Disciples' Church, under the preaching of the great leader of that denomination, Alexander Camp- bell. The childhood of James A. Garfield was spent in almost complete seclusion from the great world around him. Neigh- bors were few and distant; his playmates were his own brother and sisters, and his cousins, three boys and three girls of the Boynton family. Mrs. Boynton was a sister of Mrs. Garfield, and their husbands were half-brothers. Their farms adjoined, and as a matter of convenience the district school-house was built in a corner of the Garfield farm. In this school-house, when he was only four years old, James first learned letters and the art of reading. Almost the only reading-book used in the schools at that period was the "English Reader," by Lindley Murray. This, with a few other books, and a weekly paper published for the Disciples, at Pittsburg, for which Mrs. Garfield subscribed, constituted the staple of the read- ing in her family. The "Reader" James knew thoroughly, and much of it he learned by heart. He was early indoc- trinated in the great truths of religion, as it was his mother's habit daily to read a portion of God's Word in her family, and his uncle Boynton was in the habit of flavoring all his
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BIOGRAPHICAL CYCLOPÆDIA AND PORTRAIT GALLERY.
talk with Bible quotations. It was not, however, until well grown that James turned his attention seriously to the matter
of personal religion. At the age of eighteen he made a pub-
lic profession of faith, and was baptized March, 1850, in a little stream flowing into the Chagrin River. He never after-
ward forgot the vows he had taken, and remained a steadfast and humble follower of the Lord all his days, lecturing and
occasionally preaching in the pulpits of his Church. The earliest wages which he earned were by doing work as a
farm-hand. He often got employment in haying and har- vesting from the farmers around home, but his first steady work was as a hand in a potash factory. He remained at this business only two months, and then went to Newburg,
where he agreed with one of his uncles to cut one hundred
married, and settled near by, and with her he boarded. After and could cut two cords a day. One of his sisters was now cords of wood, at fifty cents a cord. He was a good chopper,
finishing this job he thought of shipping aboard one of the lake vessels as a common sailor, and for this purpose went into Cleveland. His first application was to the captain of a schooner, who treated him with such indignity that he beat a hasty retreat. Walking along the bank of the river, he heard his name called by his cousin, Amos Letcher, who had charge of a canal-boat, and by him he was engaged to drive the horses on the tow-path. His wages were ten dollars a month and his boarding. He remained in this employment during the boating season of 1848; but his exposure in the summer and fall brought on an ague, which confined him at home and in bed a great part of the winter. All his earnings went for medical attendance and medicines. Upon his re- covery, his mother, who had never approved his intention of becoming a sailor, dissuaded him from his project by stim- ulating in him a desire for study. A teacher in that district, Samuel D. Bates, seconded her efforts, and young Garfield entered the Geauga Academy, at Chester, a few miles distant, in 1849. His plan was to secure a sufficient education to be- come a teacher himself. With only seventeen dollars in his pocket, got together by his mother and brother, but with a brave heart, he set out. He rented a room, in connection with his two cousins, William and Henry Boynton, from a widow woman, who cooked their meals. The academy was a two-story frame building, under the charge of Daniel Branch as principal, and his wife as chief assistant. About a hundred pupils, of both sexes, were in attendance, drawn from the country surrounding Chester. It was at this academy that James A. Garfield first saw his future wife, Lucretia Rudolph, a farmer's daughter, then in her seventeenth year-a quiet, studious girl, and withal good-looking. After attending the academy two terms, he accepted a situation to teach school. He was successful as a teacher, and in the spring, when his school closed, he had forty-eight dollars. He then returned to the academy for a third term. There was a library of about a hundred and fifty volumes, and among them an autobiography of Henry C. Wright, a reformer and theorist, who lived, in Scotland, on bread, milk, and crackers, at an extremely small cost, and yet pursued his studies successfully at school. With this hint, our young students put into practice their ideas of severe economy, and lived for six weeks on thirty-one cents a week. Meeting a college graduate, he was informed that poor boys could get through a collegiate course as well as the sons of rich parents, but that it would take a long time, and hard work to pay their own way. Upon this he resolved to obtain a college training, and began the study
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