USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume I > Part 53
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gaged, paid taxes, and patiently waited until others had settled and developed the country, But he was not content to do this, and the enterprise, promising as it seemed to him as he sat dreaming over it by a pleasant fireside in New London, proved to be the great mistake of his life. It led to the abandonment of a pleasant home for the discomforts of a rude cabin, the delights of civilization for the rough trials of pioneer life, the excellent schools of New England for the irregular and poorly taught schools of the border. The land to which Mr. Beatty and his companions had come was covered with forest ; it required the hard work of a lifetime to put it in condition to afford an income. During that period taxes must be paid, the family supported, and the life of the pioneer end. It may be well enough for men to move into a wilderness and undertake to subdue it, but it is no place to carry women and children. So far as the pioneers themselves were concerned, they always lost by this transition in every thing that goes to make up the sum of human happiness, and their children were also losers. Their grandchildren were fortunate indeed if they finally reached that condition in life which their grand-parents abandoned when the latter took to the woods. Having lo- cated his colony, Mr. Beatty set about the organization of the township, and here obtained his first official position, to wit, clerk of the township of Perkins; not a very elevated place, but one which must nevertheless be filled. Settlers came in slowly. In 1817, however, a post-office was estab- lished, and Mr. Beatty appointed postmaster. The era of cheap transportation and cheap postage had not arrived. The settlers were poor; few of them could raise the shilling with which to pay postage on a letter, but it was grievous to have it withheld simply because they were poor and had no money. The new postmaster proved equal to the occasion; he gave them their letters, and never made returns to the department. When called upon to do so, he replied that he received no money from the office, and therefore had none to return, and that instead of being indebted to the Government, the latter was, in fact, indebted to him. This sort of logic, however satisfactory to the settlers, was by no means pleasing to the Post-office Department, and as nobody could be found to succeed Mr. Beatty, the Government, in utter disregard of the wishes of the sovereign people of that region, in 1819, discontinued the office, and thus afforded the postmaster more leisure to look after the spiritual wel- fare of his colony. This withdrawal of governmental sun- shine was, however, not the only indignity which the pio- neer Irishman was compelled to bear in his new home. He soon had reason to conclude that the settlers had either lost faith in the talismanic power of his name, or else re- garded it as one unworthy of immortality. He was the original proprietor of the land on which the town of Milan now stands; the site, on the banks of the Huron River, was naturally a very pretty one. Frederick Christian Dencke, a Moravian missionary, had, in 1804, established a mission there, and called the place Petquoting-a very handsome name, by the way, and one which the people should never have abandoned. In 1814, Mr. Ebenezer Merry having bought the place, laid out a village, and in honor of the first owner, called it Beatty. The town, however, did not thrive under the new name much better than under the old. Town lots were at a discount; property was dull ; the people became impatient for a rise. Something must be done. The history of the world had shown that no great
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metropolis had ever grown up under the name of Beatty. A change of appellation was necessary. As they deliberated over this important matter, their fancies began to stretch away, and the spires and turrets of a distant' and successful city rose before them. They determined to repudiate Beatty, and call the embryo metropolis Milan. The change was accordingly made, and subsequent events soon vindicated the wisdom of those who made it, for within a very few years thereafter they could point with pride to two distiller- ies and a grave-yard, the distilleries preceding the grave-yard about six months. But these were preliminary and unim- portant afflictions compared with those which were to follow. Mr. Beatty was not a practical farmer; in fact, he knew nothing of farming, and was too old to learn. His life had hitherto been one of comparative ease. The great wilder- ness, with its unfettered streams, its dense forests, where the light of day hardly penetrated, its prairies glowing in sun- shine and covered with grass and flowers, had on his first visit to Ohio captivated his imagination, and he had looked forward with impatience to the time when he would be ready to enter and occupy this land, flowing, as he thought, with milk and honey. It is delightful to sit in one's study, seven hundred miles away, and give the imagination full play on this subject. The great trees, the sparkling streams, the prairie with its park-like groups of oak and maple, the blossoming wild plum, cherry, and thorn, the birds with gay plumage and sweet voice, the deer grazing peacefully in the openings or bounding gracefully through the woods, present to the fancy a picture tinted with all the colors of the rain- bow. But when you come into the forest, and undertake to fell the trees, bunch and burn them, then plow among the stumps with a new team and possibly a balky horse, in order to get bread to satisfy hungry mouths, it is quite an- other thing. In fact, a man who can do this sort of work for a week without breaking the second commandment may be safely taken into the Church without any other probationary trial. Mr. Beatty did not undertake to do this work himself, but employed others to do it, and found slow progress made, and hitches occurring constantly. In short, he was disap- pointed. The thing found was not the one sought. The lands had cost about one dollar per acre; it was difficult to find sale for them at any price, and impossible to get much more than he had paid. A part must be settled and im- proved, in order to enhance the value of what he proposed to keep. He therefore sold at any price, and considered himself fortunate when he obtained ten shillings per acre. He sold one of the choicest farms in Erie County, that now owned by General William D. Lindsley, for sixteen hundred bushels of potatoes, and when the potatoes were dug and piled up for delivery, he let them rot in the field. But this does not by any means indicate the extent of his troubles. Some of his titles were defective, and, as before suggested, although a generous, he was at the same time an exceed- ingly obstinate man. There was no such thing as compro- mise in his composition; the lands were his, or were not; he had paid for them, and would have the whole or nothing. For twenty years he was never without a land suit in court, and spent in litigation property which to-day would sell readily for a million and a half of dollars. But unfortunately the money and property wasted in these interminable suits was not the only loss sustained; they led to other compli- cations, to difficulties with neighbors, and troubles in the Church. In 1816-17 his hot temper and obstinacy led him
into another difficulty, from which he suffered serious loss ; and in this connection it may be well to record an incident of that early period, which has some relation to the point in hand. Abijah Hewitt, one of the earliest settlers, conceived, in conjunction with a man named Montgomery, the idea of building a fifty-ton schooner. Both being inexperienced in the work of ship-building, they called to their assistance Eleazur Bell, a practical shipwright, and one of the persons who came to Ohio with Mr. Beatty. Montgomery lived in a cabin not far from the marsh which intervenes between the higher ground and Lake Erie. Bell advised the construction of the vessel on the margin of the lake, but Hewitt and Montgomery insisted that it would be a bleak and uncom- fortable place to work during Fall and Winter, because of the severity of the lake winds, and besides would be at an inconvenient distance from their cabins. The vessel was accordingly built in the woods, near Montgomery's house. When finished, beams were put under it, rollers put under the beams, forty yoke of oxen attached, the whole male population of the settlement gathered to boost, and finally, by dint of much whipping, swearing, yelling, and a barrel of whisky, the Polly, for so the vessel had been christened, was conveyed to the shore, and successfully launched upon the bosom of Lake Erie. She rode the waves like a duck, and her enterprising proprietors were jubilant. But it would have been better for the proprietors, and some others, if the lovely Polly had never been built; for soon after she brought to Sandusky a cargo comprising a stock of general mer- chandise for John Beatty, and among other things one cask of brandy, designed, doubtless, to be used in the old apos- tolic way, to wit, for the stomach's sake, and which had un- til this time escaped the eye of the custom-house officials. The cask of brandy was not on the schedule. The Polly was consequently seized, and subsequently confiscated. Mr. Beatty's merchandise was put under lock and guard, and the case reported to the department. The mails moved slowly in those days: time passed, and conscious of no fault on his part respecting the matter, Mr. Beatty grew im- patient, and finally called his friends about him, drove his teams on to the wharf, put revenue officers and their em- ployés aside, broke open the doors of the warehouse, and carried off his merchandise. All this was not difficult to do ; the troublesome part of the affair came afterward, and re- sulted, not from the cask of smuggled brandy, for Beatty had nothing to do with that, but from the violent and un- warrantable manner in which he had regained possession of his goods. The United States Government was a big thing, even then, and no single citizen could afford to defy it, as Mr. Beatty discovered some years afterward, when compelled to pay the expenses, costs, and penalties growing out of this unfortunate transaction. The people sympathized with him in this affair. When the goods were seized, they knew he was suffering for no wrong act of his own, and did not stop to consider that the common good sometimes requires even the innocent to suffer and submit until the authorities have had time to investigate and decide. During this period Mr. Beatty was not so entirely absorbed in business affairs as to neglect other duties. He continued to be an active member of the Methodist Church, and on almost every Sabbath met the pioneers in their log school-houses or at their homes, and addressed them very acceptably on religious subjects. He had not been educated for the ministry, and never adopted it as a profession; his sermons, therefore, may not
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have been as profound and elegant as those of the trained theological student, but his points were presented clearly, and with an earnest, passionate eloquence, which, if it did not always carry conviction to the hearts of his hearers, at least satisfied them that the speaker believed what he said, and was making an honest effort to lead them to a higher life. In time, through the numerous lawsuits in which he became involved, his usefulness as a Christian teacher was somewhat impaired, but he was as honest in law as in re- ligion. If in religion he would make no compromise with Satan, so in law he would make no compromise with an opponent whom he thought unjust and exorbitant in his demands. That he was always in the right, no one ever claimed ; but that he thought he was, no one who knew him intimately ever doubted. During his whole life his actions afforded no indication of that penuriousness which is be- gotten of a predominating desire to accumulate wealth. Few valued money less, and certainly no man in that section at that time expended it more lavishly. A neighbor in distress always found him a ready helper and ungrudging giver. For many years of his life he kept open house, where friends and strangers alike found hearty welcome. An act of cruelty, of injustice, or of downright dishonesty, sometimes even a disrespectful word, or the slightest provocation, would render him furious with anger; but an appeal from the poor, the neglected, or the distressed, always found him gentle and sympathetic as a child. Here an anecdote suggests itself which may serve to illustrate better than abstract statements certain traits of his character. While a resident of New London, Connecticut, a boy stole from him a box of candles. He had the thief arrested at once, and arraigned before a magistrate. A witness appeared who testified that the boy was guilty as charged, and Beatty being called to prove the value of the property stolen, swore that the candles "were worth four dollars, every penny of it." The case was a clear one ; the boy had no defense. Under the law respecting petty offenses at that time in force in Con- necticut, when the property stolen was valued at four dollars and upward, the penalty was whipping at the post. The mag- istrate was about to pass sentence, when Beatty realized for the first time the terrible nature of the punishment. His anger had by this time cooled ; a reaction at once took place, and a feeling of pity for the boy supplanted every other emo- tion. Springing to his feet, he said: " If it please your honor, I desire to correct my testimony. I did swear th that the candles were worth four dollars, but I omitted. to add that that was the retail price. As the boy took a whole box, I will put them to him at three dollars and thirty-three cents." The boy was not whipped. Mr. Beatty continued to reside at the stone-house place for fourteen years. The pioneers had, during this period, made a very considerable change · in the aspect of the country. Mr. Beatty had erected a saw- mill two miles south of Sandusky (1817), on Pipe Creek. There was another nearer Sandusky (1818), on Pike Creek, and one also at Milan-all within easy reach of the settle- ment. The earlier and more hastily constructed cabins had been replaced by larger and more comfortable ones ; barns and other out-houses had been built; many openings in the forest revealed extensive fields covered with growing grain and blooming orchards ; the bear and wolf hunts had been succeeded by apple-paring bees, corn-huskings, and quilting frolics ; the northern portion of Huron had been cut off, and the county of Erie organized, with Sandusky as the county
seat ; David Campbell had started the Clarion, a weekly newspaper (1822), and the mail-coach made regular trips ; but life was dull, few incidents occurred worthy of record, and certainly in the better phase of pioneer life upon which the settler was just entering, there was little indeed to com- pensate him for the trials and hardships endured since his arrival, to say nothing of the comfortable homes and good schools of New England, abandoned ten or fifteen years be- fore. Money was scarce in that early time, and the settlers found it exceedingly difficult to obtain enough to pay their taxes. The land being new and fertile, wheat, corn, potatoes, hogs, and cattle became in a few years very abundant ; but there was no market for these articles, and about the only things which the settler could raise, for which money could be obtained, were the scalps of wolves. The commissioners of the county paid a bounty of two dollars each for those of the full grown, and one dollar for those of the immature and less dangerous animal, thus gauging the price somewhat according to the amount of courage requisite to capture and scalp the wolf. But our Connecticut settlers did not excel as hunters. The aborigines still lingered about the marshes and waters of that region, where fish and water-fowl, as well as other game, were still plenty, and noble red men, re- joicing in the names of Black Chief, Seneca Isaac, Seneca Stick, Walking Stick, and Tusquadda Stick, carried off the honors in this contest with the wolves; in short, they raised so many of these scalps that, in 1819, the commissioners, owing to the embarrassed condition of the treasury, were compelled to suspend payment, to the extreme dissatisfaction of the whole Stick family. To these gentlemen the pursuit of wolves had been the pursuit of happiness. They were not a mercenary race, and never placed so high an estimate on the money which their daring brought as to induce them to hoard it in stocking-legs; on the contrary, they may be said to have been a convivial and religious people, who sought wolves' scalps because they could thereby obtain the whisky necessary to enable them to make merry with their friends, and get a foretaste of the happy hunting-grounds of the future. In this connection it may be well to record a story which illustrates how, in these early days, the efforts of the missionary were at times overcome by the wiles of Satan. The Rev. Alvan Coe, a very worthy and devout man, established a school for Indian boys, on the fire-lands, where he sought to instruct them in the mysteries of religion, and teach them to read and write. The father of one of the students came over from the Sandusky River to visit his son, and while lingering in the vicinity, wandered into a distillery. As was the custom in those days, the proprietor offered him a cup of whisky. The Indian shook his head with much solemnity, and with great dignity said : " Papoose tell me Mr. Coe say, Ingin no drink, good man; go up much happy. Ingin drink, bad man; go down, burn much." Then, looking wistfully at the whisky, he picked it up, and, raising it slowly to his lips, said: "May be Mr. Coe tell dam lie," and drank it down. In 1829 Mr. Beatty removed to Sandusky, and soon afterward was elected mayor of the city, but his own affairs demanded his attention in too large a degree to enable him to devote much time to the business of the public, or to render office-seeking or office-holding either pleasant or profitable. While he felt a sincere attach- ment for the Church with which for so many years he had been connected, he was not by any means so blinded by his devotion to it as to be unaware of the fact, then (1834) be-
Yours very sincerely. James Cells ..
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coming each day more apparent, that in its anxiety to main- tain its hold upon the people, it was in certain vital respects influenced by the venality, prejudices, and passions of men, rather than by the teachings and example of the Divine Master. If its rules were not avowedly changed so as to sanction the owning, buying, and selling of men, they were at least interpreted by the accommodating authorities of the Church in such manner as to justify these evils and author- ize their continuance. In 1834 certain Methodists of New England, becoming alarmed at the pro-slavery tendencies of the Church, united in an appeal against slavery, and boldly affirmed that slaveholding was wrong. This elicited a counter- appeal, signed by many leading ministers, maintaining that slaveholding in the Methodist Episcopal Church was not sin-
ful. Thus the controversy opened. Subsequently a New Hampshire Conference of Methodist ministers resolved "that the holding and treating the human species as property is a sin against God, and a violation of the inalienable rights of humanity." This brought the subject so squarely before the Church that its Bishops were compelled to take decisive action. In their pastoral letters, therefore, they strongly con- demned the discussion of this question, reaffirmed the right of members of the Church to hold slaves, denounced what they termed modern abolitionism, and striking a blow at freedom of speech, forbade ministers and trustees to allow their pulpits and houses to be used for anti-slavery meetings ; in short, the authorities of the Church went so far as even to expel ministers who felt it to be their duty to denounce this great sin from the sacred desk. Mr. Beatty was a positive man, who did not accept his opinions ready made from either conference or bishop. He had long entertained a thorough hatred for the institution of slavery, and time and again had given shelter to the flying fugitive, supplied his wants, and helped him on the way to freedom. He at once espoused the anti-slavery side of this controversy, and promptly seceded from the Methodist Episcopal Church (1835), accompanied by nearly the entire congregation at · Sandusky, and established what was at first known as the Methodist Society. At his own cost he built for the use of this society a substantial edifice of stone, which, for many years thereafter, was known as the Beatty Church. The Methodist Society of Sandusky, if not the first, was certainly among the very earliest, to withdraw from the Methodist - Episcopal Church, and enter upon an independent and ag- gressive warfare against slavery. When, at Utica, New York, in 1843, the Wesleyan Methodist Church of America was organized, this society wheeled into line, became a part of that connection, and continued with it until after the Southern Methodists sloughed off from the Northern section, and established the Methodist Episcopal Church South. From this time (1845), the Methodist Episcopal Church North began to change its course for the better, and steadily advanced in anti-slavery sentiment, until it finally took radical ground, and thus left the Wesleyans no good reason for continuing a separate organization. The early abolition- ists, who had the courage to sever their connection with the Church because they believed it false to a great principle, and the manly independence to defy the anathemas of bish- ops, ministers, and laymen, as well as the ridicule and scoff- ings of the prejudiced and senseless mob, deserve more credit than they are ever likely to obtain. They battled against overwhelming odds in behalf of a principle which all intelligent men now recognize as humane and just. They
suggested, fostered, sustained, and perfected that public sen- timent which finally destroyed slavery, and gave the ballot to the freedman. The controversy which resulted in the withdrawal of so many members from the old Church of Sandusky, and the establishment of the new society, was not conducted in the most Christ-like spirit, nor concluded with- out much bitterness of feeling. Mr. Beatty had previously encountered some opposition in the Church, growing out of business matters, and his opponents now undertook to break his hold on the congregation, and destroy his influence, by asserting that his present action was not prompted by the highest considerations ; but he never conceded to his enemies the right to sit in judgment upon his motives, that being, in his opinion, the prerogative of a higher court, and one in which they would probably not be represented either in per- son or by attorney." Mr. Beatty died in Sandusky, March 16, 1845, aged seventy-one, and lies, surrounded by relatives and friends, in a little spot on the old stone-house place, which he had dedicated to that purpose thirty years before, when the first shaft of death entered his cabin, and made it necessary to seek in the great wilderness the last resting-place of a be- loved daughter. He was a man of fine presence; six feet in height ; weight one hundred and eighty pounds; generally genial; always frank and truthful; when annoyed, some- times morose and liable to give offense; when opposed, in- tractable and severe. In politics he was at first a Whig, with strong anti-slavery proclivities, and subsequently a Liberty-man, of the James G. Birney school. His estate, if prudently managed during his life, would have been worth at his death millions of dollars. After his decease it passed through the hands of two sets of administrators, and was twelve years in process of adjustment. Notwithstanding the great expense attending a settlement so prolonged and tedi- ous, and the necessity which existed to dispose of lands at inopportune times, when not half the value could be realized, there was enough left from the wreck to make handsome provision for his family; in fact, his children had all been amply provided for before his death. The lesson taught by the humblest life is of value, and from this particular one we may learn that to succeed in an enterprise requiring many years for its accomplishment, more is needed than simply ability to comprehend the plan and courage to under- take the work. These Mr. Beatty had ; but what he lacked was that industrious, indefatigable, persistent patience which attends promptly to the smallest detail, and that prudence which never yields to impulse, is never diverted by passion, never influenced by obstinacy, and which, even in the small- est affairs, always thinks before it acts. At his death Mr. Beatty left three sons and five daughters, all of whom were married. His living descendants now number over one hun- dred. Twelve of his grandsons were soldiers in the Union army during the War of the Rebellion. Among these were : General John Beatty, of Columbus ; Major William G. Beatty, of Cardington ; Captain John B. Williams, of Bellefontaine ; and Captain Leonard K. Bell, of Ashland, Nebraska.
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