OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Some Travel notes of Henry Howe
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
December 17, 1999
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Historical Collections of Ohio
Diaries of S. J. Kelly
Plains Dealer
Know Your Ohio
by Darlene E. Kelley
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Some Travel notes of Henry Howe-- Historian-- found in back of diary--

When I first knew Cleveland, now about a half a century ago, it was a
small place with only a few thousand people. Even then it had a
distinction of being an attractive spot from the beauty of its situation
and adornments of trees and shrubbery and was called " the Forest City."
The people of the town largely lived in small houses, but many of these
were pretty, simple cottages, showing refinement from their social
porches and surroundings of flowers and shrubbery.

The city had a grand start from the character of its human stock.
Indeed, I think the historian Bancroft somewhere has said, speaking of
the entire Western Reserve, that the average grade of intelligence in
its population exceded that of any other equal era of people on the
globe.

Euclid Avenue, where I once lived near Giddings, was aquiring a
reputation for beauty. One residence upon it, that of Judge Thomas M.
Kelley ( he spelled it Kelly like mine, however Kelley is the correct
way, now.) was where many fine citizens of Cleveland and other fine
dignitaries were entertained in elogant fashion. Judge Kelley had fine
children and did him great honor. Judge Kelley and I were the best of
friends and had many personal times together. General Harrison once said
it was the handsomest in Ohio. It is yet a fine home-like domicile, but
cannot compare with the palatial mansions now there.

But magnificient as these are, there is standing today upon this avenue,
one little cottage that, to my eye, is more attractive then them all,
and because it had long been the home of the late Charles Whittlesey,
the most learned of Ohio's historians; the most original, philosophic
and varied in his investigations, alike in the realms of science and
events.

The Whittlesey home-place is about three miles from the centre, a white
cottage, standing a few rods back from the avenue, partially hid by
evergreens. As I approached it on this tour to make a call upon my old
friend, whom I had not seen in many years, I was surprised at the
discovery at the pathside of what seemed to me an original sort of
door-plate. It was a small white boulder, dotted with red-spots-jasper.
The front side was polished, and on it was carved Charles Whittlesey. It
was a block of brecca, conglomerated quartz, limestone, and jasper, the
natural home of which was the north shore of Lake Erie. Only four such
have been found in Cleveland, brought here in the ice age, though common
in Michigan. This identical block was procured by Mr. Whittlesey and
shipped from the north shore of Lake Erie by Irad Kelley and his brother
Datus Kelley from Kelley's Island, Ohio.

My visit was on a bright, summer afternoon. I found the Colonel, as
everybody called him, not in his cottage, but in his garden, and the way
I went thither was interesting--in the front door and then out the back
door, through the little low rooms, filled with books and utilities of
the old student and scientist. life-long loves and companions, silent
teachers of God, man and the universe.

In the garden, in the rear of a little old bown barn, old soldier-like,
I found him, with his tent spread and in solitude. He was seated on a
camp-stool at the tent door, the sun pouring full in his face, the
afternoon of July 3,1886. As I approached he at first did not hear my
footsteps; he was gazing into vacancy, his mind evidently far away amid
scenes of a long, eventful life; at times, perhaps, on the far-away
wilderness with savages. away back in the forties, surveying in the
wintery snows of the Lake Superior country, or on the battlefield of
Shiloh, or, perhaps, to his still earlier experiences when a boy, when
this century was young, he was beginning life in a cabin among the
struggling pioneers of Portage county.

Yes, gazing into vacancy from the tent door, a rather small, aged man, a
blonde, and bald and evidently an invalid. He wore a dressing gown, and,
as I later saw, when he moved, it was slowly, painfully, in bent
attitude and leaning on a cane.

Around him, strewn on the boarded tent were a few books, a map or two
and relics of by-gone days; the old military suit he wore in the Black
Hawk war in 1832, when he was one of Uncle Sam's lieutenants of
infantry, a stiff black hat, bell-crowed, with a receptacle for a
pompon, ancient sword with curving blade, an old fashioned military coat
with rear appendage of hanging flaps. He had saved it so long ( for
fifty-four years ) that I fancied the moths must have owed him a grudge.

The Colonel had heard I was coming and sent word he wanted to see me. I
got an honest greeting. There was no gush about him. He was one of the
most plain, simple of men, a terse talker, giving out nuggets of facts--
so terse that if perchance a listener let his mind go a wool gathering
for a second and lost two or three words, he would be clear broken up.

He told me that was the fourth summer in which he had passed several
hours daily in his tent. This was to take sun baths, from which he
thought then for the first time he was exerperiencing a decided benefit.
Asking what his special ailment he replied: " I have five chronic
complaints, and all in full blast," When asked why soldiers did not take
cold in tents he answered: " Because the temperature is always even.
Indoors we cannot avoid uneven temperatures and in changing from tent
life to house life one is apt to take cold."

No intelligent man could long listen to Mr. Whittlesey without feeling
his intellect stimulated, and valuable facts were being poured in for
storage. His conversation, too, was enlivened by little flashes of grim
humor, which he gave forth apparently unconscious, with a fixed, sedate
expression. And if you then smiled he gave no answering smile, and you
would be apt to think you had not heard him aright.

The learned man had helped me on my first edition; had contributed an
article on the geology of the State. The science was then new and the
article is now obsolete. He wanted to help me on this edition. and wrote
for it " The Pioneer Engineers Of Ohio."

There is another article also in this book by him, " Sources of Ohio's
Strength." but of the great characters therein portrayed no one had
greater breadth of knowledge, not one so varied knowledge, not one a
finer intellect, not one was more worthy of the respect and veneration
of the people of the commonwealth than Charles Whittlesey. And is
singular gratification to me that he of all others of the many who
contributed papers to my first edition should have contributed to this
edition.
And he was the only one of them all who was living and could do so.

After this and another interview I saw him no more. His work was
finished. He passed away in the Autumn, and the white boulder with
blushing spots that adorned the front yard of the cottage is also gone
and now rests over his burial spot in peaceful Woodlawn. With profound
gratitude, I pen this tribute not only to one of Ohio's great men, but
to all of the Nation's great men. --Henry Howe.
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