USA > Pennsylvania > Erie County > A twentieth century history of Erie County, Pennsylvania : a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, and its principal interests, Volume I > Part 46
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"You were born in a log cabin on a farm in Northwestern Penn- sylvania?" said the interviewer.
"Yes, on the side of a hill in Erie county. My father built a new house when I was a child which I thought to be remarkably commodious and elegant. Even when we moved into it with our belongings-there
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were ten of us in the family, seven sons and a daughter-it seemed en- tirely too large and oppressively lonely. I went back to look at the old house several years ago, keeping its stately proportions in mind as I had always remembered them, but I couldn't find it. I saw a weather- beaten little hut of one and a half stories, with three rooms down-stairs and an unfinished attic. I was distressed and amazed to learn that it was the imposing palace of my childhood. My six brothers and I worked on the farm and attended district school in the winter.
"We left North East in the early spring of 1850 and bought a farm in the famous 19th District of Ohio, which was represented in Congress by Joshua R. Giddings, and at a later day by James A. Garfield, and which was also the home of Senator Benjamin F. Wade, the furious abolitionist. We were very poor. Money was scarce. Markets were few and far apart. Farm products had to be traded to merchants for calico and other goods. I got a little money by peeling apples and dry- ing them in the sun. I milked five cows twice a day, and walked three miles to an academy at Kingsville. One winter I did chores at a man's house for my board. Then I got a room at the academy, sweeping the building and ringing the bell for my tuition. My mother gave me a bed and a box stove, and I did my own cooking.
"I worked hard, but it was a contest with poverty all the time. The young men of today don't know what it is to fight for an education, and those who are clothed and fed and given every opportunity by their fathers are utterly unappreciative. I found that I was making no head- way, and went to Jefferson, the county seat, where I was engaged as principal of the village schools. The children of Wade and Giddings were among my pupils, as were the sisters and brothers of William Dean Howells, the novelist. My salary was too small to remember."
In 1860 Mr. Burrows moved to Michigan, where he took charge of the Richland Seminary, occupying all his spare time with the study of law, his legal studies having begun at Jefferson while he was principal of the Union School. In 1861 he was admitted to practice law in the Supreme Court of Michigan. He had settled permanently at Kalamazoo, and there early in 1862 raised a company for the Seventeenth Michigan Regiment with which he served as captain until the fall of 1863, when he was assigned to the staff of General Welsh, serving with distinction until the winter of 1864, when he was honorably discharged. Then he entered politics. In 1865 and again in 1868 he was elected prosecuting attorney ; in 1872 he was elected to Congress as a Republican, and again in 1878, serving then continuously until 1895. His speech in the 51st Congress on the Mckinley bill placed him in the fore-front of the de- fenders of protection. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1895, and re-elected. In June of 1908 he was temporary chairman of the National Republican Convention that nominated Taft, and his speech upon taking the chair was a notable deliverance, outlining the policies of his party in the pending campaign.
Nor was he the only notable individual of his father's family, or alone in the brave and determined struggle to make progress. They were all of the same blood, and the same fibre. They were all true and
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typical American citizens, and all imbued with the same quality of patri- otic devotion. The oldest of the brothers, William R., died in Arkansas in 1846. When the Civil War broke out the remaining six boys of the Burrows family entered the army, all in the service at the same time. Jerome B. became a lawyer, and, like his brother Julius, rose to pre- ferment among his fellow citizens, becoming in time a judge of the Circuit Court of Ohio. Nor was there one of the family who did not attain to prominence. Three of the family are still living: Hamilton, at North East, aged 80; Jerome B., at Painesville, Ohio, aged 75; and Julius C., at Kalamazoo, Mich., aged 12.
In the year 1864 there came to the "Old Erie Academy" as principal, Albion W. Tourgee. He was in a manner connected with Erie. His wife was a sister of Miss A. C. Kilbourne, for many years an honored teacher in Erie and during the closing years of her life the best beloved member of the Erie high school faculty as a tablet to her memory in the school amply testifies. Professor Tourgee had direction of affairs at the Academy during part of the period of its greatest prosperity and popularity, but his service as a teacher in Erie was cut short by a Federal appointment that made him a "carpet-bagger." if you please, but fur- nished to the State of North Carolina one of the most useful citizens that commonwealth ever knew. He was settled at Greensboro, and from there went in 1865 a delegate to the constitutional convention, furnish- ing for the new organic law of the Old North State an article which, Judge Sharswood declared, provided the "most admirable system of courts known to any state in the Union." He was elected judge of the Superior Court of North Carolina in 1868, and served until the end of the term, in 1874, filling the position with striking ability and with a courage that challenged the wonder and admiration of all cognizant with the conditions, and that may have been the charm that preserved him. It was during the five years marked by the greatest activity of that mysterious organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, a fraternity that had set out to undo Judge Tourgee, and that it was expected would kill him. With a carelessness and indifference that amounted to contempt he went in and out among them without guard and even without arms, defying the disturbers of the peace to touch him; and he was not touched. He continued in North Carolina until 1879, when for a year he removed to Denver, then taking up his residence in Mayville, N. Y.
In 1874 he began the literary work that made him famous. His first book, "Toinette," afterwards called "A Royal Gentleman" presented one phase of the "race problem" that is particularly perplexing to the South, and most of the novels of at least the first half of his literary career, were in one or another key of the social situation as he found it in the South. Of "A Fool's Errand" there were more than a million copies sold, and it was translated into several languages. His legal writ-
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ings were of the highest order, and consisted chiefly of a codification of the laws of North Carolina, and a digest of cited cases, the latter win- ning especial praise from legal authorities.
Judge Tourgee was twice enlisted as a soldier in the war of the Rebellion and was twice discharged on account of wounds received. He had been a student at Rochester University when he enlisted in 1861, and, discharged in 1862, took his degree of A. M. He again enlisted, to be discharged in 1864, when he came to Erie, to become an educator. In 1897 he was appointed U. S. Consul at Bordeaux, and in 1903 was transferred to Halifax, where he died in 1905.
The greatest traveler Erie ever produced and the man most widely known from personal contact was undoubtedly Harry Kellar, the ma- gician, born in Erie in 1849. His father had been a soldier under Napo- leon the Great, and Harry, the son, was a campaigner himself, though along rather different lines. When Harry was a boy he was put to work early and found employment in Carter's drug store on North Park Row. In its day it was the handsomest store in town and from it proceeded enterprises that enriched more than one man or one corporation. Carter's Smartweed is still ours, in Erie, but Carter's Little Liver Pills "flew the coop" years ago. Now it was in this breeding-place of successful proprietary remedies that Harry Kellar learned or acquired the A, B, C's of the magician's art-where he perfected himself in the feat of draw- ing different liquors from one bottle. There he learned enough of chem- istry to be useful to him in the future.
Once there came to Erie one who proclaimed himself the Fakir of Ava, skilled in legerdemain and a capital entertainer. He remained here a week and the Fakir and his pig came to be the talk of the town. When he went away Harry Kellar went with him as his assistant, and was with him for two seasons or thereabout. At that period there existed another "craze," if you please to call it so. It was denominated "Spiritualisni," but of the stage sort, and purported to be manifestations of materialization, the exponents being the Davenport Brothers, who became celebrated as mediums. In 1867 Harry Kellar became con- nected with the Davenports and continued with them four years, there learning to perfection the cabinet tricks at which he became more expert in time than the Davenports themselves. During this period he traveled extensively throughout the United States. His career as a traveler did not begin, however, until 1871, when with Fay, the then famous magician. lie formed a partnership-Fay and Kellar-and toured Mexico and South America, acquiring, besides more extended knowledge of the magician's craft, a thorough command of the Spanish language.
In 1873 Kellar formed an organization with Ying Look and Yama- dura, and set out upon a professional tour the like of which had never been, nor has it been repeated. First they toured South America; then
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Africa; going thence to Australia, India, China, the Philippines and Japan. His partners died in China in 1877, and for a time he was alone as the responsible head of his enterprise. But in 1879 J. H. Cunard came in and Kellar and Cunard for five years traveled through India, Burmah, Siam, Java, Persia, Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Mediterranean countries. He then turned his face toward home, and from 1884 to 1907 toured the United States, finally retiring in 1907. His American home had been in the vicinity of New York. Upon his retirement he came to Erie, but finally decided to take up his residence in Buffalo, where he now lives.
Another stage celebrity who was born in Erie county is Denman Thompson. He was born near Girard. in 1833, the son of Capt. Rufus Thompson, a carpenter, who was from New Hampshire. Denman was intended for his father's trade, but his bent was not that way. Growing up a sort of half-farmer lad he gained the consent of his father to take employment in the counting room of a relative in New England, but ledgers were no more to his liking than jack-planes. In 1852 he went on the stage at Lowell, Mass., as a member of a stock company, and made himself so useful that two years later he was offered a place in the stock company of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Toronto, as comedian. For fifteen years he remained on the roll of this theatre, being permitted, however, upon two occasions to play engagements elsewhere, appearing for a season successfully in the City of London (Eng.) Theatre. In 1874 he made a professional visit to the West Indies.
In 1875 while an invalid at the Red Lion Hotel in Pittsburg, he wrote, in bed, "Joshua Whitcomb." It was a dramatic sketch, but it attracted the attention of John B. Stetson, a successful theatrical man- ager. who put it on the stage of the Howard Athenaeum, Boston, with Thompson in the title role. The engagement became an extended one, far beyond what was looked for. and at its conclusion all the principal New England cities were visited and the attraction returned to Bos- ton for a brilliant season that closed the Stetson engagement. In 1876, J. J. Hill, a Chicago merchant, became Thompson's manager and "Joshua Whitcomb" was extended into a play and proved an instant and uninterrupted success for eleven years.
Mr. Thompson then wrote "The Old Homestead," which was first scen in the Boston Theatre in 1886. It was even more successful than the first play, of which it was a sort of sequel. It was taken on tour for two years and then was brought to New York where it occu- pied the stage of the Academy of Music during the entire seasons of 1888, 1889, 1890 and 1891. being received with undiminished favor until the very last, an engagement without a parallel in theatrical annals.
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In the beginning of the decade of the fifties French street from Sixth street down, then known as Cheapside, was the principal retail section of the then newly created city of Erie, and among the mer- chants who then did business in that row was J. C. Selden, an iron- monger. His was the principal hardware store of the time, and his business patronage was not confined to the city, but extended to the remote sections of the county, his acquaintance being extended in all the region round about and for long distances. Mr. Selden brought from Albion to his store a youth named O. H. Irish, a "lad of pairts," as Ian Maclaren might have said of him had he known him. Irish was bright. He had the business instinct, and he developed in that store. After a time he moved out into the west and, engaging in busi- ness on his own account, prospered and became a banker, acquiring a large fortune. He also interested himself in politics and became a powerful factor in his section, not only as a manager, but as a spell binder-though the speakers were not so called at that time. By Presi- dent Lincoln he was appointed consul at Dresden and became famous for the royal hospitality he exercised at the consulate. He was one of the best known American representatives abroad. When he re- turned to America, however, he met with business reverses and accepted the place of assistant chief of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at Washington, filling that place until his death. O. H. Irish was one of the notables of the nation in the Lincoln era. He was a graduate of Cheapside, Erie.
Early in the summer of 1880 an Associated Press telegram briefly conveyed the intelligence that Yale University had conferred the de- gree of A. M. upon Artemas Martin of Erie. At that time F. A. Crandall was editor of the Gazette and F. H. Severance, assistant, and these, discussing that three-line news item, concluded there might be a story in it, for so conservative and dignified an institution as Yale does not throw honors about indiscriminately. So a search was begun for Artemas Martin; first in the directory, but without avail, and then by inquiry among those whose goings-about would lead one to believe a man known in New England would have some acquaintances in his home in Erie. It was in vain. At length a casual and almost purpose- less statement made in a group of men that the whereabouts of one Artemas Martin was much desired to be known, brought a response from an unexpected quarter. "Artemas Martin?" said Banker Joseph McCarter. "Seems to me there is a man of that name or something like it a tenant on a little farm of mine out in East Millcreek. But what do you want of him?" "To interview him about getting a de- gree from Yale," said Mr. Severance. "Oh! well it can't be my man Martin, for he's only a small gardener. You'll find him on the street market on Saturday."
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It was not promising, but it was a clue. Learning the exact loca- tion of the farm, a visit was paid to the place. The Master of Arts was indeed that market gardner. In the kitchen of the little farm house the new artium magister was found in his shirt sleeves working a little Gordon press upon which he was printing, a single page at a time, the next month's issue of the Mathematical Visitor, the page to the visiting inquisitor a worse than Chinese puzzle, consisting of the elucidation of a problem of probabilities, that even in its detailed work- ing out was beyond the understanding, even in the smallest part, of the seeker after information. There it was learned that the bare-armed gardener-printer at work in that little farmhouse kitchen was one of the most famous mathematicians in the world; that the honor con- ferred upon him by Yale, was but the last of a long series that had come to him-from England, from Russia, from France-that his own name was dwarfed by the long array of initials by which he had the right to supplement it. He was scarcely known in Erie, his home, but in every institution of higher education in the United States, in Washington, in Berlin, in Paris, St. Petersburg, Edinburgh and the English cities he was well known and the magazine he was printing- only a page at a time-would find its way to all, or practically all, the great seats of learning in the world. He had a choice library of mathematical works, many of them exceedingly rare and valuable, per- haps the most valuable collection of its kind in the State.
And yet, to look at him, and to hear his quiet modest conversa- tion ; to know him as the occupant twice a week of a stand on the street market where he sold the produce of his market garden, it seemed as though, after all a mistake had been made. He was so unassuming, and even diffident; his modesty was so marked there was a charm unusual connected with that first interview. In the course of a few weeks interviewers came in from many of the leading newspapers of the country and Artemas Martin became better known to the nation at large-and certainly in Erie, but he continued in the even tenor of his way, not unsettled in the least by flattery, though perhaps pleased that the exploiting of his name had brought him more customers in the market. When elected to Congress Hon. W. L. Scott secured a posi- tion for Prof. Martin in the office of the Coast Survey at Washington, and he continues to this day in the government employ at the National Capital.
Almost any day there may be seen upon State street an aged man wearing a frayed and faded uniform of blue, soiled and badly weath- ered, but with the old-fashioned brass buttons bright and clean. He walks now with a degree of uncertainty in his steps; his feet are not so light as once they were; and his hair is grayer, his eye dimmer, and his face more wrinkled. There is that about him that indicates, if not
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poverty, the possession of this world's goods in only limited amount. But he always wears that dimmed and faded suit of blue, and there is no one living in Erie who can state that he ever saw the aged man wearing anything else. "Who is he?" a bystander asked.
The answer: James Gibbons; the man who fired the first Union gun in the War of the Rebellion.
Gibbons is an Irishman; was born in Galway in 1835, emigrated thence to Canada, came to the United States and enlisted in the First United States Artillery at Rochester N. Y., in 1851, seeing his first soldiering in California. He re-enlisted in 1856, and was assigned to Capt. Doubleday's command, and at the beginning of 1861 was of the garrison in Fort Sumter. Mr. Gibbons tells an interesting story of what took place in Charleston harbor at the time the War of the Re- bellion broke out. There had been embassies, he says, demanding the surrender of the fort, but Major Anderson refused every time. They could see the works progressing on Morris Island and Sullivan's Island and a Moultrie. It became known to them that if they did not yield, the fort would be fired on on the morning of April 12, and it was ex- pected.
Suddenly, at 2 o'clock on the morning of April 12-earlier than was expected-there was the dull boom of a mortar, and a hurtling shell came over from Ft. Johnson toward Sumter. Then the great guns on Morris Island opened fire, and the bombardment was on.
The force was not adequate in Ft. Sumter. The men were in the bomb-proofs arranged in three reliefs, the first-of which Gibbons was a member-under Capt. Doubleday; the second under Surgeon Crawford; the third under Lieut. Snyder. After the firing had begun there was a deliberate wait. No haste was manifested and it was not until 7 o'clock that preparations were fully completed to reply. Then Capt. Doubleday himself sighted the gun, which was aimed at the forti- fications at Cummings Point. "Capt. Doubleday stood about two feet behind me" says Gibbons "as I held the lanyard in place. 'Fire'! he commanded. And I pulled the lanyard. It was a good shot, for it struck the walls on the point."
The echo of that discharge did not cease reverberating for four long years, and until it was firmly established in America and to the world that this government was not to be destroyed. And conscious of the fact that the honor of firing the first Union gun fell to him, is it strange that this veteran, in his 75th year, and a soldier at 16, should wear with pride the uniform he wore that April morning in 1861? The fact that it can be worn at all after more than 48 years is a marvel and a further proof of the pride of Gibbons who contrives to keep it in some way intact.
CHAPTER XXXVI .- THE GRAPE BELT.
FIRST OF THE VINEYARDS .- A REGION TRANSFORMED .- WINE MAKING. -SHIPMENT OF FRUIT .- THE GRAPE JUICE INDUSTRY.
Prophetic indeed must have been the vision of those pioneers who, in the end of the eighteenth century, looking out upon the vast, unbroken wilderness for a place to establish homes, chose out of all that wide expanse of the great forest primeval the section of it that, bordering the south shore of Lake Erie, is included within the boundaries of the county of Erie. For out of that forest wilderness there was evolved, through the efforts of those pioneer settlers and their heirs and assigns as fair a rural country as the sun ever shone upon. If it be in the springtime, with the orchards that thickly dot the landscape white or pink in their clouds of bloom; or in June, when the springing vines tinged with delicate green are loading the air with the delicious perfume of their blossoms; or later, when the meadows and grain fields are smiling in the flood of golden sunshine ; or in autumn, when the purple grapes load the vines, the orchard trees bend with the load of fruit, the fields by their myriads of corn-shocks or the stretches of golden stubble proclaim the bounty that the earth has yielded ; or even in winter, when beyond the snow- covered fields and bare orchards the comfortable homestead of hos- pitable dwelling and mammoth barns-if it be at any season of the year that this rural landscape may be viewed it will be to challenge admiration as one of the fairest and most satisfying in the whole wide world. And no part or section of this magnificent farming country is fairer than that part of the county of Erie that is reckoned "within the grape belt."
The section that has for years been distinctively known as the grape section is included in the townships of North East and Harborcreek, and of those townships the northern portion, the rather broad plain or plateau that extends from the base of the ridge to the shore of the lake. It is the western end of what is generally known as the Chautauqua Grape Belt in the geography of agriculture, and the his- tory of the grape industry is a sort of horticultural romance. The grape had been grown in a desultory sort of fashion from a very early date, but then rather as an experiment than with any purpose of making it profitable. Indeed, to most people the grape was re-
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garded as a fruit too tender for this climate. However, in 1857 Mr. William Griffith, Smith Hammond, Esq., and Dr. Avery, inaugurated an experiment along more practical lines. The two former planted an acre and a half to grapes of the Catawba variety, and Dr. Avery devoted an equal area. The beginning of the industry was thus only three acres. It may be proper to state that, farther east, at Brocton, a beginning had been already made, but the result of that effort at cultivating this fruit was still problematical. These North East gentlemen were therefore among the true pioneers.
N.
A GRAPE HARVEST SCENE.
The real leader in this new departure in horticulture was Mr. Griffith. From the beginning he was inspired with abiding faith. The first years seemed to demonstrate the fact that the conditions existing were favorable, for the product was good. It remained there- fore to learn whether there was a market for the fruit. Two methods suggested themselves: to sell the fruit fresh or to convert it into wine. Both were decided upon. The fruit was packed, fresh, and carefully cleaned, in pasteboard boxes, made attractive with printing and each containing four pounds. These were sent to the large eastern cities and there they sold at 45 cents to one dollar per box- when they sold ; sometimes they didn't sell and then they were re- turned. As only a part of the product of even the small area then in cultivation could be sold fresh, it was decided to convert the rest into wine, and the South Shore Wine Co. was organized, and wine cellars constructed at the farm of Mr. Griffith on the Middle road, a short distance from North East. Thus the business was started.
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