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 65
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Let us consider in the first place that this survey for a city of the future was made in 1795, and then, that the survey covered the entire shore from east of "Harbor creek" ( Mill creek we call it today) to about Massassauga Point, the head of the bay. It was a generous reservation for the future-the future still in this year of grace, 1909, so far as the most of that original survey is concerned. The specifications called for streets not more than 100 feet wide nor less than 60 feet, and squares not more than five acres each in extent. Mr. Ellicott elected to adhere to the maximum limit. His starting point was Parade street. He gave it that name because it had been a French military road, and he laid it out to be of the maximum width of 100 feet. It was the eastern boun- dary of the survey of the town. West of Parade street he laid the land out so that at regular intervals, all the way as far as the survey of the town extended, there were streets 100 feet in width, and half way to the line of the southern boundary of the town lots there was another street 100 feet in width running east and west crossing the other streets already referred to at right angles; and wherever the 100-foot streets crossed he laid out public squares, the "reservations for public uses" provided for in the act. Then, for purposes of symmetry, he planned it so that the streets running north and south, next the 100-foot streets, on each side, should be but half as far distant from the main thoroughfare as the other parallel streets were from each other. Now 660 feet make exactly an eighth of a mile, and in order that the squares should not exceed the limit specified the streets running east and west were surveyed 330 feet apart, or a sixteenth of a mile, the large squares being thus five acres in extent. The lay-out of the city was therefore on the plan re- duced to its lowest terms, of six long squares interposed between the reservations or public squares (we have called them parks) : the north and south streets of 100 feet in width bisecting these public squares or parks, and the central main street, running east and west (Sixth street), being divided at each of the public squares and passing on each side. The survey of town lots for the proposed town of Erie laid out the plan in three sections, the centre of each being a public square and the dividing
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line of the sections being the street midway between the public squares. Chestnut street thus became the division between the first and second sec- tions and Cranberry street the division between the second and third. Beyond Cranberry street there was laid out a section exactly similar to the other two, and the principal street running north and south was called Republican street, and the intended streets west of Cranberry were named Cedar, Mulberry, Magnolia, Republican, Gooseberry, Willow, Hazel and West. Farther west the survey consisted of out lots.
It was a splendid lay-out for a great city, and there can be no doubt that Andrew Ellicott had a prophetic eye when he formulated the plan he did. Part of it, however, came to naught, for later an ambition seized the people of Erie and the plan for a splendid city in the future was as nothing to the then present prospects. However, it must not be lost sight of that at the time Erie was but a modest village, by no means fully occupying the first section of Erie, and therefore with no resources beyond what the state had granted to meet the requirements of a crisis. In 1833 it became a settled fact that a canal would be built to Erie. It was neces- sary that there should be an adequate harbor constructed. For this money was required. The question, How can this be procured? was answered : By selling the third section. This was brought about by securing the passage by the Legislature of an act authorizing it to be done and the employment of the proceeds to construct the canal basin in the harbor of Erie, reserving, however, out of the lands of the third section, one hun- dred acres for a county poor farm. Thus was Erie's westward progress halted at the western boundary of the second section.
When Andrew Ellicott began the survey of the town of Erie he established a starting point. It was located upon the grounds of what had been the French fort, and with reference to present day conditions was the southeast corner of Parade and Front streets. There he set up a stone monument or landmark upon which he had inscribed :
Erie, 1795 Lat. 42° 8' 14" N. Var. 43 E.
It was a stone of the shaly state that crops out on the shore, a piece of a thick stratum of the rock that underlies the city. How long it re- mained where the surveyor had planted it cannot be accurately told, but someone indifferent to the law and scripture, willfully or otherwise over- turned and displaced it, and for a time it became as might be said a rolling stone, for it drifted about until rescued by the late Col. John H. Bliss, who, knowing no better way to ensure its preservation, took it into his possession and kept it until, after the Public Library had been opened and the museum department established, deposited it there, where it re- mains, safe from harm, but not performing the duty it was designed to do.
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The settlement of Erie had its beginning near that stone land mark -- that is to say, the first structure known in what was to be Erie. That structure was the French fort. The first structure of the permanent set- tlement of Erie was however at the next corner south. That structure was the hotel of Rufus S. Reed. His father, Col. Seth Reed, had built a house down in the valley, nearer the stream, but when he decided to move into the interior and shortly did, taking up land at Walnut creek, at what is now known as the hamlet of Kearsarge, Rufus S. elected to get on the higher level ground, and there built a much more commodious house. It stood at the corner of Second and Parade streets. While the stone at the corner of Parade and Front streets was the starting point of the city on paper-the survey made by Mr. Ellicott, the real starting point of the town was the tavern of Rufus S. Reed. Second street was the first thoroughfare of Erie to be laid out and built upon.
Second street was opened by Major McNair in 1802, and the open- ing consisted in chopping an avenue through the forest. The work of opening the street was not done all at once. There was no great need of it, for the population was sparse. Mrs. Nancy Hoskinson, writing in 1884, from information she derived from people living in Erie at the time of the opening-original settlers-states that in 1806 there was not much clearing done in the street, and it was not until 1811 that the street was cleared of trees and stumps as far west as French street. There had, however, been clearings made here and there in other lo- calities in that quarter (which is now the northwest corner of the First ward). French street had made considerable progress, and by 1811 had a number of buildings, the most notable being the house of George Buehler, on the corner of Third street, that in time became more famous than even the Reed hotel, for the Buehler house was also a hotel, and it was in the Buehler house that the first court ever held in Erie convened. At the beginning of the Nineteenth century, however, the heart of the town was in the vicinity of Parade and Second streets. The eastern end of Second street was more thickly settled than farther west, because all the industries of the time were on or near the creek, and the principal store was that of Rufus S. Reed, in the Reed building at the corner of Parade street. The industries of the time were two saw-mills,-one built by the government at the time Capt. Bissell erected the American forts, and the other by Col. Thomas Forster on the east bank of the creek where the Fairmount Mill now stands-a tannery on Holland and Fifth streets owned by Mr. Deming, and a brick yard in the valley of the creek, started by Thomas Hughes, Sr.
Capt. John Cummins had built a house on the southwest corner of French and Second streets, and in his reminiscences of the ancient days, he informed Mrs. Hoskinson that when Second street had been opened through to French, and had been worked into passable condition it was the custom upon occasions to use it as a race course. Trotting was not
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then in vogue, nor were blooded race horses known, any old scrub would serve until its equine standing as a runner was established. The starting point was Rufus S. Reed's store at Parade street, and the finish at Capt. Cummins's, and the citizens of those early days contrived to get as much sport out of these speed contests as the modern patrons of the race track obtain from the much more pretentious meets.
The first court held in Erie met at the Buehler house in 1803. From the court sprang a necessity. That necessity was a jail, and the jail that was built was the most elaborate building of its time. It was made of hemlock logs. Judah Colt owned a lot on the southeast corner of Second and Holland streets and it was on the Colt lot that the jail was built. The timber for the building was cut on the lots which now belong to St. Joseph's orphan asylum. The logs were brought by hand to the site of the building, for the ground was so low and swampy that oxen and horses could not get a foothold. The timber was hewn a foot square and was erected into a house by Robert Irvine, carpenter and Mr. Graves, mason. It was built in 1804, and at first was intended for a residence, but Mr. Colt sold it to the county commissioners, who desired to procure a jail, and when it became county property, important alterations were decided upon. The wooden floor was removed and there was substituted a floor of stone two feet thick, laid in mortar. It was ceiled throughout with oak plank two inches thick, held together by cleats crosswise. It was two stories in height and had four rooms, two in each story. The win- dows were very small, placed high and secured by iron gratings, part of which remained until the jail was taken down in 1830 or 1832. The jailer's family lived in the east rooms and the other part was devoted to the prisoners. The criminals were roomed below and the debtors above. There was about eighty feet of an inclosure which was of stout hemlock pickets about fifteen feet high.
Robert Irvine, the carpenter who built the jail, was the first jailor. He came to Erie in 1802, and next year built a dwelling place for him- self on Seventh street not far from French, which he left to take the position of jailor but he held that post only a year. Mr Irvine was the leading carpenter of his time and it was he who built the first court house in Erie in 1808. He was a native of Ireland and came to America in 1774, living for a short time at Philadelphia when, with Gen. Wayne's family he moved to Carlisle, and a strong friendship grew up between him and the Waynes. When Isaac Wayne came to Erie in 1807, to obtain the remains of the General, his father, he presented Mr. Irvine with Gen. Wayne's effects, and later the General's chair was presented Mrs. David Wasson, mother of Mrs. Bernard Hubley, who ever afterward cherished the relic as the most valuable article of furniture of which she was pos- sessed.
John Gray succeeded Mr. Irvine as keeper of the jail and held the position until it was abandoned when the new jail on Sixth street (where
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the present court house stands) was built in 1811. The first prisoner confined in the original jail was a colored servant girl belonging in the family of Wm. F. Codd, and she was charged with the murder of a child of her employers. The little child was found drowned in the creek, and after the negro girl had been in prison for three months she was dis- charged as no evidence to connect hier with the drowning could be ob- tained. Meanwhile the terror of her situation had driven her violently insane so that it became necessary to chain her.
Soon after she was released her master, Mr. Codd, became insolvent and, fearing that he would be imprisoned for debt, absconded. Perhaps the first prisoner for debt was Thomas Wilson, one of the founders of the town, an army contractor, a ship owner and a leading merchant who failed in business. After he had been a prisoner for some time, Rufus S. Reed and Robert Knox, postmaster, became bondsmen to Jailor Gray for Mr. Wilson, and he was permitted to become a member of the jailor's family. In 1813-14 Mr. Wilson represented the Erie district in Cong- ress. Mr. Gray was himself considerable of a character in early Erie. While filling the office of jailor he also from time to time served as sheriff, postmaster and justice of the peace.
It was in the year 1805 that the first step out of the woods towards its goal as a great city was taken by Erie, when it became incorporated as a borough. Nor was the act niggardly in its appropriation of territory. for the act erected into a borough the first section of the town of Eric as surveyed by Mr. Ellicott, its boundaries being Parade street on the east, Chestnut street on the west, Twelfth street on the south and the lake, or bay on the north, the territory being nearly a mile square, and the pro- portion of it actually settled, and sparsely at that, being as one to ten. Al- lowing, therefore, that the portion settled had been cleared, though as a matter of fact it was not, there was nine times as much unbroken forest as there was of clearing at the time Erie was erected into a borough. And this is a liberal allowance, for as has already been stated in this chapter. there was scarcely any clearing in Second street, the thoroughfare first opened, in 1806, and when the jail was built (about the same time) the land south of Second between Holland and Millcreek Valley was a hem- lock forest.
So the legislators were liberal in that they assigned the new borough plenty of land in which to grow. The population at the time the borough was created was probably between 200 and 300, for by the census of 1820. -fifteen years later-the borough contained only 635 inhabitants. But, if the law makers at Lancatser, which was then the state capital, were liberal in respect to the territory assigned, their successors at Harrisburg were disposed to lean the other way for by an act passed in April, 1833, it was provided :
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That the first section of the town of Erie, in the county of Erie, shall still continue and forever remain a borough under the name and title of "The Borough of Erie," and the east side of Parade street, the south side of Twelfth street, the west side of Chestnut street and the north side of the water lots, in the Bay of Presque Isle, shall continue to be the boundaries thereof.
Thus it will be seen that by fiat of the Pennsylvania law makers Erie was forever to remain a borough, and it was a good many years after the edict went forth before the people of the little hamlet by the side of the inland sea troubled themselves respecting the character of the corpora- tion of which they each formed a part. They were in no special haste. There were no boomers in those days. They were content to move along at a slow pace. indeed there seemed to be no especial stimulus of ambi- tion to put spurs in their sides, and after a time the place came popularly to be known as "The Sleepy Borough." From the year of its incorpora- tion up to 1811 the principal work devolving upon the authorities was to open the roads that still were filled with the trees of the original forest- that and the erection of a jail. But progress was made. By the year 1811 French street had become quite a popular, if not populous, thoroughfare. It had then become the heart of the town, because Erie had grown sufficiently to be recognized by the government at Washington to the extent that it had been created a postoffice town, and the postoffice was that year built on French street. The first postmaster was Jailor John Gray. He was appointed April 1, 1811. But he served only a little more than two months. On June 13, 1811, Robert Knox was appointed, and he filled the position for seventeen years-the longest term on record as postmaster of Erie.
Mr. Knox's first act was to build a postoffice. It was erected at the corner of Third and French streets ( where public school No. 1 now stands). It was built of logs with a small frame addition and was oddly constructed. Mrs. Hoskinson describes it. The large front room was used for the postoffice and store; back of this was the sitting room, a small three-cornered apartment which opened into a bedroom with fold- ing doors ; from the kitchen to the upper story there was a very large stairway: underneath this was the servants bedroom, which had double doors but no windows ; the parlor and bedrooms were on the second story. In the rear there was a garden, the ground sloping to the ravine, near the edge of which there was a spring of clear cold water. In the summer the garden presented a beautiful appearance, the vegetable beds being bordered with flowers.
Mr. Knox, who was a native of County Down, Ireland. and who settled in Erie in 1803, was genial, witty and original, and was a general favorite. The postoffice was a sort of clubroom. In the evening there was always a coterie of gentlemen there, and if there was not room in- side there was a large "block" outside which in pleasant weather would be seated full. Here were often seen Major and Dr. Wallace, Capt. D.
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Dobbins, Col. Thomas Forster, Dr. P. Christie of the U. S. Navy, Capt. Richardson, Lieut. Tewksbury of the Navy, Capt. Connor, Capt. George Budd, commander of the naval station: Major and Capt. Maurice, topographical engineers, and others of the prominent people of the place and time. Then. as now, gatherings of that sort were given over to story telling, and it came in time that the block obtained the sobriquet of the "Lying Block." In May, 1824, some wag, or party of waggish spirits perpetrated the practical joke of stealing the block, and the result was that Mr. Knox perpetrated a poem, entitled: "Knox's Lament for his Lying Block," which resulted in his election to the ranks of the Erie immortals.
The borough government began early in its modest way to occupy the land, and to bring about improvement. And what was the process by which the town of Erie was dragged out of the woods and its streets made available ? It was a councilmanic process somewhat after the order of present day proceedings, except that there was then no ward problem to disturb and also that there was but little money to spend.
It is proper first to introduce the new government of the borough. It was incorporated by an act of the Legislature passed March 26, 1805, but the first election was held on May 5, 1806, more than a year later, when these officers were chosen : Burgess, John C. Wallace ; council, Judah Colt, Rufus S. Reed, George Buehler, Robert Hays, George Shontz; con- stable, Robert Irwin. The election over, no time was wasted. The very next day, May 2, 1806, there was a meeting to complete the organization, when these appointments were made : Town clerk, James E. Heron ; street commissioners, Thomas Forster, William Wallace, James Baird ; treasurer, William Bell. The people of the infant borough, it will be observed selected the best material obtainable. All were men of standing in the community, leaders in business, and educated. In the selection of street commissioners they put Thomas Forster first. He was a Princeton man. educated to be a civil engineer, and his fitness for the position is therefore apparent. William Wallace. another commissioner, was the first lawyer to take up his abode in Erie. He represented the Pennsylvania Population Co., and built and lived in the frame house on East Sixth street, still standing, and known as the old Sill homestead. Of the officers elected the burgess was Dr. John C. Wallace, Erie's earliest physician, and he was to become distinguished in later years by serving as Justice of the Peace, County Commissioner, a colonel commanding a regiment during the war of 1812, and the assistant of Dr. Usher Parsons in taking care of the wounded in the battle of Lake Erie who were brought to Erie for treatment. Judah Colt was the agent of the Pennsylvania Population Co .; Rufus S. Reed was the leading merchant and business man ; George Buehler kept the principal public house ; Robert Hays was a man of sub- stance. William Bell, the treasurer, was Associate Judge, and James E.
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Heron, the first town clerk, was a brother-in-law of Dr. Wallace. It is thus evident that the people put their best foot forward when they set out upon their journey as a corporate community.
There was a meeting of the Council on May 9, 1806-the first meet- ing for borough business, when their initial act was to issue "Instructions to Thomas Forster. James Baird and William Wallace, Regulators for the Borough of Erie," the instructions being as follows :
Gentlemen: You will please proceed as soon as convenient to ex- amine and regulate Second street from the west side of Parade street to the east side of French street, and French street, from the south side of Front street to the north side of Sixth street, marking by post or other- wise each corner where streets intersect the same, and also marking from the edges of the lots twelve feet for the purpose of footways. You will also procure implements for the purpose of regulating the streets of the borough, and when said business is finished you will make report to the burgess, who is hereby authorized to draw his warrant on the treasurer of said borough for the amount of moneys due for said service, allowing each regulator one dollar per day while necessarily engaged in said busi- ness, as also the moneys expended in the purchase of the aforesaid in- plements.
By order of the Burgess and Town Council. JAMES E. HERON, Town Clerk.
The regulators went promptly to work, and were ready to make their report on May 16, eight days after the instructions were issued. But first the council felt the duty incumbent upon them of providing a revenue, and to this end it was voted that a "tax of fifty one-hundredths of a dol- lar be levied on the valuation of property for the year 1806." Then the council voted "That the Burgess is authorized to receive proposals for taking the stumps out of French street from the south side of Front street to the north side of Sixth street, viz: between the lines made by the street commissioners for foot-ways." James Savage came forward with an offer "to take the stumps and roots out from the front side of the Burgess's house to the front side of Judge Bell's house" for $37, and he got the job. Then Rufus S. Reed was authorized to contract on the best terms he could for hauling away the stumps and leveling French street, and for leveling Second street from the Gaol to French street. The stumps in the foot-ways were to be dug out by owners of property, and an ordinance to that effect, imposing a penalty for neglect was passed.
It was not until September that the other streets of the borough claimed attention, and it was at a meeting on the 5th of that month that State street, eventually to become the principal street of the town, came forward to receive attention. Here is a resolution adopted at that date which is interesting and instructive as indicating the economy that had then to be practiced :
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Resolved That $25 be appropriated in repairing Second street and that Mr. Rufus S. Reed be authorized to lay out the money to the best advantage.
That $5 be laid out in improving Third street and Mr. Buehler be re- quested to lay out the money.
That $10 be laid out on Fourth street and that Judah Colt be in- structed to lay out the money.
That $11 be laid out on State street and that Robert Hays be in- structed to lay out the same.
How was this for a lay-out? What could the councilmen of today do with $51 toward the repair and improvement of four streets? There are no details to convey an idea of the amount of work done, but the man- ner of the appropriation seems to suggest that the expenditures voted were munificent, for the leading men of the town were called upon to look after the business. But note the deference paid to Mr. Buehler. Unlike the others, his first name is not used, and then he is not directed, instructed or even authorized to do the work ; he is requested to do it. Mr. Buehler was proprietor of the village inn, and the meetings of the council were held at Mr. Buehler's.
It was at this period that the new road from the south was being constructed to Erie, the road ever since known as the Waterford Turn- pike, and the borough council was moved to do its share toward bringing the road into Erie. In furtherance of this the following resolution was adopted May 16, 1802 :
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