USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > The founder of the city of Cleveland, and other sketches > Part 2
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Oft shall our city here review
Her earlier years while centuries roll; And still her onward course pursue, Blessing her founder, heart and soul!
The monument is located on the spot where, - it is said, the founder of the city stood when he selected its site in the wilderness. The monument is not only artistie in design and finish, but a tribute as beautiful as it is appro- priate to the founder of a great commercial city.
The structure consists of a circular pedestal of polished granite, seven feet in height, sur- mounted with a bronze statue, life-size, hold- ing a surveyor's staff in the right hand, and a compass in the left hand. The pose of the statue is not only graceful and manly, but indicates a high degree of physical energy com- bined with intelligence.
The founder of the city of Cleveland was not only a wise man, gifted with remarkable endowments, but a prophet whose predictions were verified. It was he who led the van of ' civilization into the wilds of the Western Reserve. He was soon followed by a phalanx
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of heroic pioneers, the best blood of New Eng- land.
The city which he founded is the grand landmark that characterized his career -a city not only distinguished for her beauty, but for her intelligence and noble aspirations. She is still young, and has before her a brilliant future; and though in her girlhood, sits en- throned like a queen on the emerald bank" of Lake Erie, looking into the mirror of its crystal wave, and if not admiring her own charms, is admired by every stranger who comes within the "charmed circle " of her acquaintance.
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THE CUYAHOGA RIVER AND VALLEY
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THE CUYAHOGA RIVER AND VALLEY
TT would seem that the Valley of the Cuyahoga in prehistorie times was regarded as the "Indians' Paradise." The tribes on the east and west side of the river were hereditary ene- mies, if we may judge from the relies of mounds and military earthworks which still remain as tokens of a mereiless warfare. The river marked the boundary line between them. The posses- sion of the valley was the prize for which the belligerents fought for a long period, perhaps for centuries. The locality was rich in its natural productions. The river abounded not only in a variety of fish, but was the favorite resort of numerous water-fowls, while the adjoining forests were literally alive with deer and other wild game. The relics of mounds and earth- works that are still to be seen along the line of the river are but the " hieroglyphies " in which the primitive record of the Cuyahoga has been written - a record of stubborn heroism and of crimson barbarities. It is a pity that these hieroglyphics cannot be preserved from oblitera- tion by the ploughishare of modern civilization.
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As late as the year 1800 there stood a gigantic mound near the mouth of the Cuyahoga, which was crowned with a growth of aged forest trees, the sentinels of a prehistoric age. In the course of several years afterwards the river left its ancient channel, known as the "old river-bed," and cut its way in a straight line along the eastern base of the mound, undermined it, and swept away its last vestige. This remarkable mound may - have been the " mausoleum " of some renowned barbaric chieftain, or it may have been a "watch-tower," commanding, as it did, a broad view of the delightful Valley of the Cuyahoga, the lake, and the adjoining region of unbroken wilderness.
It is not known who was the first white man that discovered the Cuyahoga River. It is quite probable, however, that it was a Frenchman. The French government, in 1524, sent out an exploring expedition to North America in com- mand of the distinguished navigator Verrazzano. He touched at various points along the coast from Georgia to Newfoundland, and probably entered more or less of our navigable rivers, with a view to ascertain the character of the country in the interior. In doing this it is be- lieved that some of his crew were lost in the wilderness or wilfully strayed up the Valley of the Hudson, the St. Lawrence, or some other
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North American river, and finally penetrated the region of our great north-western lakes.
That such was the fact seems verified by the relics of a stone monument, which were found in 1838 on the farm of Alfred Lamb, Brighton township, county of Lorain, about twenty miles west of Cleveland. On one of the stones was engraved the " outline " of a ship under sail. On another stone the following words were in- scribed : "Louis Vangard, La France, 1533." The inference is that he was the captain of a ship sailing on Lake Erie, and had landed to explore or hunt in the interior and been killed by accident or by the Indians. His comrades, with a view to commemorate the spot, as it would seem, erected the monument. This Louis Vangard was probably engaged in the fur-trade with the Indians. He and his crew must have built the old fur " storehouse" that was found on the western bluff at the mouth of the Cuya- hoga by Americans who commenced, about the year 1770, to transport goods and flour on pack- horses from Pittsburgh to Detroit by way of the old Indian trail, known as the " Portage Path." They used the old fur storehouse as a deposi- tory. It was at this time an ancient structure. It was built of split logs, had fur in its crevices, and had been deserted.
It is questionable whether the water-craft in
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which Louis Vangard sailed was a full-rigged ship or an open sailboat. If a ship, he pre- ceded La Salle, who launched the Griffin near Buffalo in 1679, and who has the eredit, in his- tory, of launching the "first ship" that sailed on Lake Erie. It would seem, from the date which appears on the stone monument, that Louis Vangard was the first white man who dis- covered the Cuyahoga, and that he probably. erected the fur storehouse found there in 1770, remnants of which, it is said, were incorporated into the patchwork of a small dwelling-house, which is still standing on the corner of Hanover and Vermont Streets, West Side, in this city. If we accept the testimony of the stone monument, we shall find that one hundred and forty-six years elapsed after the visit of Vangard before La Salle launched his ship Griffin. Both were adventurous Frenchmen, who evidently sought to explore the wilds of the West and to secure a profitable fur trade with the Indians. La Salle, as Indian tradition says, touched at the mouth of the Cuyahoga in his voyage up the lake, but failed in obtaining furs from the Indians, for the reason that the prow of his ship was decorated with the image of a "fiery dragon," whose threatening aspect so frightened the natives that they fled from its approach and hid them- selves in the recesses of the forest.
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On the 8th of June, 1786, there arrived at the entrance of the Cuyahoga a delegation of Moravian missionaries from Sandusky, accom- panied with thirty or more of their Indian disciples, men, women, and children. David Zeisberger was the "St. Paul " of the delega- tion. They passed up the river in boats until they reached Tinker's Creek, where they landed on open ground which had grown up to weeds, and which had been occupied and abandoned by the Ottawa Indians. It was a fortunate spot for the Christian pilgrims, weary as they were, and hence they called it " Pilgrims' Rest."
Here they built log cabins for shelter, and planted corn. Their breadstuffs, while await- ing the harvest, became exhausted. They soon found they could not live on fish and wild meat without bread. In the midst of despair they prayed for relief, and relief came from a quarter entirely unexpected. A train of one hundred pack-horses, laden with flour and conducted by white men, arrived by way of the "Portage Path " from Pittsburgh, bound for Detroit. The train encamped for the night at Pilgrims' Rest, and cheerfully supplied the suffering mission with all the flour that was needed.
One of the trainmen, while searching for a stray horse the next morning, lost himself in the adjoining wilderness. He wandered for three
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of the Indian disciples were sent to Pittsburgh to purchase milch eows, and returned with three head.
The Indian disciples, so far as practicable, were kept employed: the men hunted and the women performed most of the drudgery. The latter were about as prolific as they were profitable. They cooked, baked, and washed, planted corn, and gathered the harvest, pounded the corn, milked the cows, and fed the little dusky disciples with mush and milk -a food which was to them the "sincere milk of the word " as they understood it.
The winter passed quietly and happily, though it happened to be a very cold one. When the spring came it eame not only with sunshine and the musie of birds, but with "rumors of war" and with threats of massacre. The Indian chiefs in the vicinity did not approve the " teachings " of the missionaries, and had resolved to exterminate them and their disciples. This induced the missionaries to abandon Pilgrims' Rest and to seek rest some- where else. They removed with all their dis- ciples, about the 10th of May, to the mouth of Black River, where they expected to find rest, but found none. No sooner had they encamped here than the Indian chief of this region ordered them to depart. They then proceeded up the
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lake to Huron River, where they encamped upon its banks and were kindly received by the chief of that region. They had now exhausted the provisions which they brought with them, and were compelled to feed on turtles' eggs, which they found in great abundance buried in the sand along the margin of the river. Here they planted corn, built cabins, and remained for several years engaged in their philanthropic- . work.
It would be interesting to trace their career to its termination, were it pertinent to this occasion. Suffice to say that the Moravian missionaries who penetrated our western wilds were as sincere as they were persistent in their attempt to Christianize the natives. They re- garded all mankind, whether civilized or savage, as a common brotherhood. But in attempting to convert our American Indians they seemed to have failed, if we may judge from what the Apostolic Zeisberger says in one of his despair- ing moments. The following are the signifi- cant words in which he expresses himself in his published diary : -
" We must let ourselves be content to be in the midst of Satan's nest where he is visible lord and king, and where we are surrounded with devils, for in each of the wild Indians there lurks - who knows how many ? - and this is not a mere figure of speech, but is really so."
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The Indians are evidently the children of nature. Whether they can be permanently civilized or Christianized, remains a problem that has not been solved. They believe in the " Great Spirit " -a creed that seems as ortho- dox as it is simple. It is a pity that all civil- ized men are not as "sound" in their theology as the untutored children of the forest.
At the close of the Black Hawk war, in 1833, the chieftain, Black Hawk, and several of his band, were taken, in the custody of a govern- ment officer, to Washington as captives, to be dealt with as the authorities might decide. The captives, instead of being shot, as they had expected, were kindly received, and lionized by being taken about town, shown its wonders, and then sent through several eastern cities, with a view to convince them of the invincible power of the white people. They were then returned, under escort, to their homes in the " far West." While on their return, the party stopped over a day at Cleveland, as requested by Black Hawk, in order to give him an opportunity to visit the .grave of his mother, who. as he said, was buried on the banks of the Cuyahoga. He took a canoe and proceeded alone up the river to the bluff that projects into the valley from the south-east corner of the " Riverside Cemetery." Here he remained for an hour or more, in silent
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meditation, and then rejoined his comrades with a tear in his eye, though it is said that an Indian never weeps.
From the fact of this visit to the grave of his mother, Black Hawk, it may be presumed, was born on the banks of the Cuyahoga. It is evi- dent that he possessed qualities of heart that are akin to a refined humanity. In personal appear- ance he was of medium height. straight and strong, and moved with the agile step of an antelope. In a word, he was born a hero, and proved himself a hero. He was one of nature's noblemen, one of the few of his race who has made his mark in American history.
The Cuyahoga has a progressive record. It is not now what it was in primitive days. Civilization has nearly obliterated its relics of barbarism. An advancing civilization is still doing its work. It has already begemmed the banks of the river with a beautiful eity, spanned its waters with magnificent viaducts. and sprin- kled its valley with factories and workshops, the bee-hives of honest labor, in which resound by day and by night the musical revelries of artistie industry and the quick footsteps of com- mercial activity.
The ages are dramatic. Civilization cannot stand still if it would; it must either advance or retrograde. Less than a century ago savages
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trod the Valley of the Cuyahoga. Thus it is that one race of mankind succeeds another. The superior exterminates the inferior. It is not improbable that we, of the Saxon race, will, in the course of time, be succeeded by a superior race, though in estimating ourselves, we may think there is not much room left for improve- ment. However this may be, it is pretty cer- tain that every life, whether animal or vegetable, has its destiny, and must enact its part in the grand but mystic struggle of nature to reach perfection.
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HOMES IN THE WILDERNESS
HOMES IN THE WILDERNESS
"THE Western Reserve lay cradled in the silence of her own native solitude until the year 1796, when heroic men, with their families, came in successive groups from the barren hills of New England, and found homes in the wilderness.
They purchased wild farms, or traets of land,. erected for themselves log cabins, and com- meneed life anew with a determination to achieve success. A few of them, however, concentrated. at different points and laid the foundations of prospective towns.
In the wake of these primitive adventurers came a scanty supply of merchants and mechanics, who located in the prospective towns. Immigration continued to increase. A tavern, a dry goods shop, and a blacksmith shop, with as many log dwellings, constituted a village or town, and, of course, became the central point of association and trade. These central points were soon graced with accessions .of more aristocratic pretensions. Saturdays and Sundays were the social days of the week,
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in which the sparse population of the vicinity visited the towns for business purposes, or for the sake of hearing the news, and having a .social interview with each other. Not many years elapsed before these infant towns were supplied with a liberal endowment of lawyers and doctors, interspersed with a few elergy- men. They came with the hope of achieving professional success. The learned professions may be a public necessity. At any rate, they seem to be inevitable appendages to an advan- cing civilization.
Most of the early pioneers were compara- tively poor, and came into the wilderness with slender outfits. In one sense, however, they were rich - they had brave hearts and strong hands. They brought with them their families and a few household goods, packed in canvas- covered wagons, drawn by oxen or horses. Their journey from the East occupied from six to eight weeks. Some came by way of the lakes, in open boats, while others came by land. They encountered formidable embar- rassments on the way, especially those who came by land. The roads were but old Indian trails, the mud deep, and the rivers unbridged. On arriving at the home spot of their selection in the wilderness, they at once, after erecting a log cabin, eleared away a patch of the forest
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about it, and let in a patch of sunlight to cheer the wild outlook of their isolation. The rivers abounded with fish, and the woodlands with game. From these sources they were supplied with meat. From year to year they cleared a few additional acres of land, until a spacious and productive farm smiled about them, stocked with cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep; and thus, by dint of patient industry and the practice of . a rigid economy, they soon acquired a health- ful homestead, together with all the substantial comforts of life. In a few years the log cabin and log barn gave place to a spacious frame house and barn, and in less than a half een- tury every part of the Western Reserve became dotted with the happy homes of civilized life.
In accomplishing all this, the original pio- neers endured hardships and suffered priva- tions which may be imagined, perhaps, but cannot be expressed in words. Some idea, however, of their career and perplexing embar- rassments may be derived from their experi- ences. The following citations from the his- tory of their times will illustrate, to some extent, their trials, haps and mishaps, while engaged in subduing the asperities of an inhos- pitable wilderness, and converting it into a paradise of fruits and flowers and social enjoy- ment.
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David McConoughey was of Scotch descent. He removed in 1810 from Blandford, Mass., to the Western Reserve, and brought with him his family, consisting of his wife and six children. He left Blandford in the month of November. The journey at that season of the year was extremely tedious and dreary. They travelled nearly six hundred miles through mud and snow, with one yoke of oxen * and one horse attached to a wagon laden with the family and a few goods and supplies, and were fifty-three days on the way. No account has been given of what occurred while on their journey. But after reaching the Reserve they encamped for the night in the woods, not far from Bainbridge, where they were serenaded through the weary hours by a pack of hungry wolves. The heroic members of the family assailed the wolves with guns and clubs, and exterminated six of them. The survivors of the pack were stricken with terror, and took to their heels. On the 1st of January, 1811, the family arrived at the cabin of Samuel McConoughey, a younger brother of David, who had settled in the north-western part of Aurora in 1806. Here the family remained till the following November.
In the early part of the year 1811, David purchased one hundred acres of land of Ben ja-
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min Gorham, in the south-east corner of Bain- bridge, Geauga County. Upon this land the father and sons commenced elearing away a portion of the forest and building a log cabin, which was soon ready for occupancy, and into which the family moved on Thanksgiving Day, 1811. It was a rudely constructed cabin, eighteen by twenty feet, with cheerless aspect, a puncheon floor made of split logs, and a fire- place built of stone, with a chimney laid up with flat sticks and plastered inside with elay- mortar to prevent its taking fire, a chamber without floor, a roof of stave-like shingles held in place by long heavy poles, an outside door on wooden hinges, with the latch-string "hang- ing out," and open apertures for windows, which, for want of glass, were curtained with thin white cloth, admitting but a faint light. The crevices between the logs in the walls of the cabin were wedged with split sticks and plastered over with clay-mortar to exclude the wind and drifting snows of winter. All the furniture they had was a few articles which they brought with them from New England. These were by no means adequate to their necessities. They supplied the deficiency by manufacturing for themselves rude stools for , chairs, a high bench for a table, and poles interlaced with ropes of twisted bark for bed-
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steads. The cabin fireplace was broad and deep, so as to receive huge back-logs, which were drawn into the cabin through the door- way in winter on a handsled, and often by horse-power. The small wood was then piled in front, and in this way a comfortable fire was kept up by day, and preserved in the burn- ing back-log during the night. For a time this MeConoughey family were the only inhab- itants in the township of Bainbridge. Their nearest neighbor was a brother located in
Aurora township, six miles distant.
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dense forest intervening was infested with bears and wolves, and intersected with deep muddy creeks and black-ash swamps. This made an interchange of visits hazardous. MeConoughey's wife was a remarkable woman, possessed of great energy and practical good sense. She contrived to make her cabin home as cosey and pleasant as possible for herself and family, and succeeded in proving that life in the wilderness may be a happy one.
At this time wild turkeys, deer, bears, wolves, wildcats, raccoons, opossums, poreu- pines, elk, and rattlesnakes still abounded in almost every part of the Western Reserve. There were also several fragmentary tribes of Indians. The sons of the white immigrants soon became experts in the art of hunting and
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trapping wild game. A son of McConoughey named Porter and his cousin, Jarvis White, discovered, while on a hunting excursion, a large hollow tree lying on the ground with a hole in its side. The boys, thinking there might be wild game in the log, fired several shots into the hole, when the dog rushed into it and attacked a bear that had been wounded. The howls and growls that followed were agonizing, and the hunters feared that the bear would kill the dog. The father of one of the boys arrived just at that moment, threw off his coat, crawled into the hollow log, seized the dog by the hind legs, and slowly drew the dog, whose teeth held the bear, out with him - dog, bear, and all. It was "a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether " that did it. The bear was then killed with a bear-lance. It was a large, fat she-bear, weighing over four hundred pounds. The hollow in the prostrate tree, on examination, was found to contain two more bears, or cubs, half the size of the mother, which were also seized and killed. The flesh 'and skins of the bears were utilized, and fur- nished both food and bedding for the family. Fat bear-meat, when salted, was regarded by the pioneers as a good substitute for salt pork. In these early times veritable salt pork eost from sixteen to twenty-five dollars a barrel,
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while salt by the barrel was equally ex- pensive.
From necessity the primitive settlers sought out "many inventions." In want of steel traps they constructed log traps in which they caught wolves and bears. These traps were four- sided, made of logs, and pinned at the ends. On one side was a sliding door, which could be raised by a spring pole with a bait attached, so that when the animal entered the inside of the trap and disturbed the bait, the door would instantly descend and catch him. In this way hundreds of wolves and bears were caught and exterminated.
In one instance a bear was caught in Geauga County in a very different manner. Two men were engaged in a sugar-camp, making maple sugar. They had left syrup in the kettle at night for three successive nights, and in the morning found the syrup had as regularly dis- appeared. They suspected the thief. They were well armed with a jug of whiskey, and on the next night poured a liberal quantity of it into the syrup, tasted it, and found the mixture pretty strong, but sweet and palatable. They drank freely of it themselves, and then, wrap- ping their blankets about them, camped for the night and enjoyed an unusually sound sleep. One of the men awoke before the other in the
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morning, and saw, to his surprise, a huge bear lying alongside his companion and both dead asleep. The toddy had proved too much for the bear as well as for the men. The wakeful man seized an axe and despatched the thief who had stolen the syrup, and then awoke his slumbering companion. Both men congratu- lated themselves on the result of their strata- gem, and doubtless renewed their faith in the virtues of whiskey.
Thomas Umberfield and wife emigrated from Connecticut to the Western Reserve in 1798, with a family of several children, and were the first family that settled at Burton. The pro- prietors of the township gave Mrs. Umberfield sixty acres of land as an inducement to settle there; and though it was an unbroken wilder- ness at that time, Burton was declared to be in point of soil and natural beauty of location a second garden of Eden. The family came from Buffalo by boat to Fairport, sailing thence three miles up the river where they landed, and whence they proceeded to Burton on a rude sled drawn by oxen. They arrived at Burton in June, where they pitched their tent. Mrs. Umberfield was a beautiful woman with a young family of promising sons and daughters. In a few days, with the aid of friendly settlers from distant points who had heard of their
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