OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio -- The Frontier (Part 8)
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
October 10, 2001
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Historical Collections of Ohio
The Kelley Family Collections
Newspaper article, Plains Dealer
compiled by S.J. Kelley-- 1925
And Then They Went West
by Darlene E. Kelley  1998
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Ohio's Frontier -- Part 8
Western Reserve 
Article by S.L. Kelly
Plains Dealer
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Know Your Ohio
Ohio"s Frontier -- Part 8

Western Reserve 

The 41 proprietors of Euclid, then met to draw lots to see which of them
would settle there according to contract in the years 1797, 1798, and
1799. None volunteered. The 11 who received  the lots were; Seth Pease,
who established a distinguished and useful family in the Reserve;
Theodore Shepard, the physician; Amzi Atwater, assistant explorer, who
lived until 1851 and the last survivor of the survey party; Elisha Ayer;
Tim Dunham; Samuel Forbes; Samuel Hungerford; Wareham Shepard, packman
and best friend of Atwater; Samuel Agnew; and several others.

Moses Cleaveland satisfied the men, and while it is true he was giving
away his employer's assets, he was trying to gain for the company, a
built in population. He served both employers and employees as well.

On Monday, October 17,1796, John Holley wrote in his journel, " Finished
surveying in New Connecticut; weather rainy." Tuesday October 18, he
again wrote, " We left Cuyahoga at 3:00 o'clock 17 minutes for HOME.  We
left at Cuyahoga, Job Stiles and wife and Joseph Landon with provisons
for winter." They rowed about seven and a half miles and camped for the
night.

On the Reserve at Cleaveland, the General left Job and Tabitha Stiles
and Edward Paine in charge of stores in a cabin on lot 53. At Conneaut,
he left Eliza Gunn and wife and the Kingsbury family. At Sandusky was a
French trader. These were the only white men left on the Reserve as a
silent winter hardened in.

Deserving to return to Hartford and a hero's welcome, the managers of
the survey party instead stepped into a meeting of disappointed
stockholders. They immediately appointed a committee to inquire why the
costs of the survey were running so high; and into the conduct of the
directors. They challeged Augustus Porter's field notes of survey and
had them gone over by the Yale professor, who could find no error in his
total of 3,450,753 acres, including the half million acres of the
Firelands.

While these business matters went on at Hartford, Connecticut, those
left on the Reserve faced a brutal winter. 

The Stileses and Edward Paine at the mouth of the Cuyahoga were able to
survive fairly well, because they had the company rations stored there.
Besides they were assisted with game by the Ogontz, Ottawa,
Sagamaw,Chippewa, and Seneca Indians.

But at Conneaut, where the Kingsburys were holding the land, snow fell
early and the winter froze in hard. James Kingsbury had come onto the
Reserve as the first frontiersman with intent to settle. Initially, he
had nothing to do with the Land Company. He and his wife, Eunice, came
from Alsted, New Hampshire, with their children, Abigail, Amos,and
Almon, an infant. They came to have a very large part in the Cuyahoga
story.

Kingsbury was a colonel of militia in New Hampshire, but pinning for
action. There being none, he packed up his family in an ox-drawn wagon
and moved west for the frontier. The young family reached Buffalo Creek
in New York, just as General Cleaveland was coming through to catch up
to his surveying party. He urged Kingsbury to join him, help with the
work, and buy land later, when he had seen all the survey and pick his
favorite spot.

Kingsbury worked with the survey crew in matters of supply and when the
crew went home in the fall, his assignment was to remain at Conneaut in
charge of some stores. Because the winter set in so fast and hard, it
drove game into hiding, and it was necessary to kill for food one of the
cattle left by the survey party.

Business matters called Kingsbury to return to New Hampshire in
Novemeber. He went on horseback, expecting his trip to take perhaps six
weeks, leaving his family. But when he arrived in New Hampshire, he was
laid low by fever. As soon as he could ride, he started his return. He
reached Buffalo Creek on December 3, and the next day resumed his
journey in a driving horizontal snow.

At Conneaut, meanwhile, his wife took ill. She had just birthed a baby
and the other children were trying to feed the family at her direction.
They had been put to such extremes as digging out kernals of corn which
had fallen between the floor puncheons and scraping aside snow to find
anything beneath that would be edible. The mother's fever deprived the
baby of its food, and the older children frantically tried to feed twigs
to feed the remaining cow, so that the baby might have milk. It was
crying constantly with starvation.

James Kingsbury fought his way through the snow, and in many places it
was chin deep with drifts. He plodded on each day with the help of an
Indian. His horse died on this last leg of his journey. On December 24,
he arrived at his cabin in Conneaut.

Inside the cabin, his children told him of the worst as Mrs. Kingsbury
being hardly able to speak. He then, took a hand sled and started on
foot to Erie for a bushel of wheat. He was able to get to Erie and back
before anyone in the cabin died. They cracked the wheat and boiled it,
but it was to late for the baby. The infant died.

As they carried the child from the house in its coffin, Mrs. Kingsbury
collapsed unconscious and remained that way for two weeks. Kingsbury was
able to kill a pidgeon for rations. The weather broke shortly and it
looked as though the rest of the Kingsbury family could survive until
the arrival of the second survey party.

The second survey party was under the leadership of Reverand Seth Hart
and Seth Pease was in charge of the outfitting and launching and most of
the work.

He left out of Suffield, Connecticut, April 3, and headed for
Schenectady, New York. On June 1, Seth Pease recorded in his journal, "
Entered Cuyahoga mouth at 3hrs.22 minutes p.m. Found Mr Stiles and Mrs.
Stiles well, also Mrs, Gunn." 

The work in Cleveland started with news of a death in the party. David
Eldridge drowned in attempting to swim his horse across the Grand River.

Seth Pease, being an organizer, began his work in an orderly way. First
he checked his supplies left from the previous year, then set the men to
planting a huge garden to avoid the hunger previously experienced and
organized the men into crews, each headed by a surveyor, and he kept all
assignments clear. He could keep a mental accounting of supplies and
where to put them so that, if teams were on schedule, they would run
right into the replacements. He also made provision for taking good care
of the horses, Hannah, Mary Ester, the Morton Mare, and the Stow horse.

Seth Pease, still a young man, was outranked in years and prestige by
most of his crew who were older and included several captains and
majors. He ran the detail with a strangely combination of firmess,
formality, and respect.

As the work progressed. Pease himself took charge of one survey party.
Thus his headquarters was always in motion. Yet even as he worked his
own line, he had an amazing picture in his mind of what was taking place
on all other parts of the survey, and as he moved, he not only directed
the surveying, but also the supplying of his crews. He made arrangements
for the Kingsburys to be brought down from Conneaut to Cleveland, and
for supplies to be leapfrogged ahead of the crews. 

While his mind oversaw these broad aspects of the work, he also had an
eye for small details. ( " Warren's crew left a frying pan on the west
bank " ), and for the technical precision of the survey, worrying
constantly about the precision of the compasses. 

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to be continued in Part 9.