OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Gen. Simon Perkins [12]
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
June 19, 1999
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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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Twelvth in Series--

     The Election affair of 1813 deprived Gen. Simon Perkins, however,
of even the small satisfaction he had felt over his command.  As a
result, he would never again agree to run for public office; and
although it would be many years before he would again express his
political opinions openly, he would set himself against democratic
forces that had turned the majority of the settlers against him.
     But he turned again to his business of settling his country and
building the Reserve for its people. As Wadsworth had said, "It is of
first importance--- that you fall, not by the hands of each other.  You
are to each other friends and not enemies."
     Simon's first concern that summer of 1812, was the completion of
the new house he had begun before going to the front. It was a modest
frame house of simple New England lines, conveniently located on a site
very like that of Simon's old Lisbon home, on a gentle land near the
Warren public square and overlooking the winding Mahoning River. Near
the house, Simon built an office, and here he transacted land business,
took care of the mail, and held meetings.
     In Oct, 1813, Simon, Nancy, the four children, and Simon's clerk,
Joshua Henshaw, moved into the new house.  following his usual reticence
about personal affairs, Simon had not told his friend Daniel Coit about
the move, and for that reason Coit said to him, " You do not deserve
it," But to Nancy, who had lived in a log cabin for seven years, he
wished " much joy on the subject" of the new house.
     During those log cabin years, Nancy had often managed their
household alone. Simon might be gone to explore or survey a piece of
land, to pay taxes at different county seats, or to discuss land and
financial affairs with State Legislatures at Chillicothe.  During their
early years on the Reserve, Simon made frequent trips back east.
Traveling alone on horseback, he could reach Connecticut in twenty days,
a laborious exercise he was later to insist his own sons must imitate
because he thought it might   make them healthy as he had been. But the
Eastern trips meant he was gone for at least two months.  At such times,
Henshaw took care of any urgent land business and looked after the
affairs of Simon's farm; for several years, Asael Adams Junior, who had
come to the Reserve with his father and Dr. Jabez Adams, his uncle,
carried the mail between Warren and Pittsburgh.  But it was left to
Nancy, to care for the children and to manage the garden that provided
them with food.
     Between 1815 and 1824, Simon and Nancy had five  more children:
Martha, born in 1815; Charles, 1817; Joseph, 1819; Jacob, 1821; and
Henry Bishop, 1824. They had been more fortunate than many frontier
families in health of their children, but they were unable to save
Martha, who suffered from some unnamed illness and died in 1817.      
     Nancy did not complain about her frontier life, but it is evident
that she missed her Connecticut home and was determied her family would
not live in the rough way some westerners did. In their house there were
knives and forks, tumblers and wine glasses.  The children and Nancy had
shoes that Simon bought in Pittsburgh; their clothes were made of
calico, linen, or flannel; and Nancy had bonnets which at times might
cost Simon seventy-two bushels of wheat. In their new home, Nancy and
Simon taught the children manners, morality, religion, family loyalty,
and a sense of duty and responibility to their country. The new house
was also a place to entertain their friends and visitors generously when
they called.
      Simon, along with others, had been one of the first men in the
State to have a plan of the Erie canal, and was often in Columbus , now
the Capital, to discuss a simular canal to connect Lake Erie with the
Ohio River.  Such a canal, according to Simon and the Legislators, would
make it possible to ship produce economically to eastern markets, rather
than to unhealthy and often glutted New Orleans market.  The farmers
might then again realize some profit on their produce, and manfacturers
of other goods might also gain from their labor.
     The idea of a canal was by no means new to men like Simon.  In 1807
he had engaged, with others, in a plan called the Cuyahoga and Muskingum
Navigational Lottery to connect the Cuyahoga and Muskingum rivers by a
waterway across the Portage Path. The venture had failed  because there
were not enough lottery tickets sold to make the project possible, and
the money raised had to be refunded. It was not a plan Simon did not
forget; and in 1811, when he and Howland were frequently discussing the
Erie Canal, he said: " I think it important that the people generally be
informed on te subject. The value of land in this country would rise at
once a hundred percent if the fancied Canal could be effected; and the
land nigh the lake would rise 5-10-20 fold --- I once thought the
location of [ town 2 Range 12] very good. It was then conjectured that
across the Portage would be a road of great travel and at the Rivers
each a town.
     On his part, Howland had advised Simon:  "This means which must be
resorted to for a considerable part, are immense.  Viz a contribution of
lands in the vicinity of the route of the canal--these contributions
will be a credit on which cash may be borrowed to great amount and sales
of said contribution lands--from this source I think much may be
calculated on--this having a deep interest in the thing will do much---"
     It was against this background that Simon had his first official
connection with building a canal across Ohio.  On Feb 25,1820, in a
joint session of the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives, he was
elected one of three commisioners to surrvey and locate the route for a
Canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, agreeably to an act, passed
for that purpose.  Alfred Kelley was also one of these commissioners.
This canal survey had depended, however on Congress agreeing to the
General Assembly's proposal to purchase United States lands in the
southern part of the State; and when Congress " manifested-- an
indisposition to make the proposed sale to this state, the survy was not
made.
      Simon's next connection with the canal was to accompany James
Geddes, a New York engineer employed by the State of Ohio, on a survey
of some of the possible routes for the Canal. He and Geddes-- as Simon
wrote an article for the Western Reserve Chronicle of May 25,
1822--journeying along the dividing ridge that crossed the state and
from which the rivers and streams flowed either north into Lake Erie or
south toward the Ohio River.  Along this ridge Simon and Geddes searched
for the place or places where the summit or ridge could most be
conveniently be passed or breached by a canal and also have enough water
to feed the canal until it could again be supplied by streams along its
lower levels. It was in Town 1 Range 11 that they found a pond whose
waters mght be made use of either to flow north toward the Cuyahoga
River and Lake Erie or to flow south to the Tuscarawas branch of the
Muskingum River. In Geddes opinion, as simon reported in the "
Chronicle," that the streams to the east that they passed in their
excursion along the ridge could be carried into the summit pond.
   In addition to this Cuyahoga Muskingum route, four other possible
canal routes were examined by Geddes that summer: a Mahoning-Grand River
route, a Black Killbuck River route, a Maumee Great Miami route, and a
Scioto-Sandusky route. Naturally considerable competition and rivalry
developed in the various parts of the State as to which should be chosen
for the canal location. Many friends and neighbors favored the
Mahoning-Grand river route.
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To be continued--