OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Gen. Simon Perkins [3] *********************************************************************** OHGENWEB NOTICE: All distribution rights to this electronic data are reserved by the submitter. Reproduction or re-presentation of copyrighted material will require the permission of the copyright owner. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 June 13, 1999 *********************************************************************** 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 *********************************************************************** Third in Series-- The Company Agreed to pay Simon two dollars per day and his necessary expenses for supplies, provisions, a horse, and men hired or employed in the services of the Company. But Simon, on his part, agreed to purchase, one thousand acres of the lands in said reserve at a price of $ 1.50 for the first 240 acres and $ 1.00 per acre thereafter. The land was to be selected in two tracts within specified townships and he was to settle on one of said tracts of said land, or in his room to have settled thereon a family,and also another family on the other tract within one year----and build on each tract a good log or frame house and clear and sow with good English grain six acres the first year, on the first mentioned tract. If there should be good mill seats on either of the tracts he selected,Simon was also to build in one year a sawmill and in two years a gristmill. The only option Simon had relevant to this land was that he need not contract for more acreage the first summer than the amount of his wages. Moreover, as the selling, surveying, laying out, exploring, settling, and building duties were not enough, Simon was also instructed to find William Wheeler Williams, one of the Erie Company Proprietors who had decided to settle on the Reserve and would precede Simon there. Because the Company was eager to promote settlement, they agreed that Williams might take in one parcel the nearly 1,300 acres to which his investment entitled him and to thus sever his connection with the Company. On his part, Williams had greed to take three men on the land to build a log house--- clear as much land and get into the ground from twenty to forty acres of wheat. In the summer following, which will be in the year 1799, he agreed to build a gristmill and a sawmill, in the township on which he shall settle. When Simon found Williams, he was to measure off the land he had choosen and see that he was fulfilling his Erie Company agreement. The terms of sale was to follow were as demanding as his duties, considering the shortage of money in the country and the physical difficulties in-volved in settling new land. He was restricted from selling any land at less than $1.00 per acre, and he was to secure 5 to 10 percent of the purchase money or a note on interest at time of sale. The balance of payment was due in three years, but interest compounded at six percent was due annually. In addition, Simon was to restrict purchases to actual settlers, who must condition to do settling duties, not less than those for whlch you have conditioned. But the nearly insurmountable of the Proprietors' conditions was their stipulation that Simon could give purchasers, on fulfillment of the terms of purchase, a deed that would be only so far a warranty as to warrant all the title that the State of Connecticut had to the land. Since the title of Connecticut was by no means warrented, protential settlers would soon prove wary of purchasing land in the Reserve, contrary to Zephaniah Swift's opinion, and would turn elsewhere for settlement. Simon had to be optimistic about the future of the western country and the protential value of the Western Reserve lands when he signed, on April 14, the terms imposed by the Erie Company. But his dicision to leave his comfortable familiar surroundings and the business already established in Tioga to go into the wild unexplored, and lawless country where, as the Trustees pointed out, many circumstances will occur, many unknown exigencies be found to be provided for, may also have been influenced by his personal responsbility for his mother and younger brother. Simon had, for a man of twenty-six, considerable family responsibility. His father had died in 1778, following service as a Lieutenant in the Revolution, and left to his wife, Olive Douglass Perkins, and their five children, 122 acres of land with a dwelling house, corn house, barn and gristmill, located on the Quinebaug-Shetucket point of land, a third interest in a potash house, the livestock of the farm, two swarms of bees, all his other goods, and 533 Continental Dollars. The estate was appraised in 1778 a slightly over 1,393 pounds, but the actual money was "not worth a continental", only a few years later. Simon had taken over the management of this property at an early age, although he was undoubtedly helped and possibly educated by his Yale graduate grandfather, Dr. Joseph Perkins, who lived on the adjoining farm. Under Simon's management the property apparently provided the family with the necessities of life, but it is improbable that the family of six had many extra comforts. And by 1798, although his three sisters were married--Olive the eldest in the family, to Christopher Starr; Rebecca, two years younger than Simon, to John Kinsman; and Joanna, twenty-two, to Samuel Lovett--. Simon was still responsible not only for his mother but for the care of his twenty year old brother, Daniel Bishop. Bishop had begun studying at Yale in 1794. At that time, the three buildings of the college were surrounded by a grotesque group of establishments, which incuded a poor house and house of correction, and the public jail---used alike for criminals, for maniacs, and debtors ---where the moans of innocent prisioners, the curses of felons, and the shrill screams and wild laughter of the insane were sometimes mingled with the sacred songs of praise and with the voice or prayer, rising from the academic edifices. Here Bishop, like other students of the time, pored over his Greek, Latin, and Hebrew books and soon became, as his brother-in-law Chistopher Starr phrased it, alternately very talkative then again silent-- sometimes troublesome and sometimes peaceable. Simon blamed Bishop's illness on his excessive study at Yale, and for the rest of his life he opposed . as consequence, to the kind of education that required close attention to books and study of the dead languages. Simon had arranged for a kind of care that few mentally disturbed persons then receive: He insisted that Bishop be fed, clothed, kept warm and clean, and treated kindly at all times. And when Simon made ready to leave Connecticut he was able, fortunately, to depend upon his brothers-in-law to see that Bishop's care was continued and that his mother was looked after. Finally, on April 19, with the best wishes of Cleaveland, The Major, and Daniel Coit for his prosperity, health. and safe return, Simon left home for New Connecticut. His way took him first to the Connecticut Land Company's office in the Hartford Courthouse where, on April 24, he copied from Ephraim Root's notes the division the Company had established for Township 8, Range 7, which was then called Canton and would later be called Claridon. This township was owned jointly by Daniel Coit, Uriel Holmes, Nathaniel Patch and Martin Smith. The division of the township would be disputed by Holmes, who would claim that his share was mostly worthless swamp and his equalizing land without value. And Simon's attempt to settle this dispute so the land could be brought into maket would be the first of many long and bitter land disputes he would handle during his years on the Reserve. From Hartford , Simon proceeded to Owego, New York. Here he employed James Pumpelly, Reben Forgason, and Daniel McQuigg to assist himin surveying the Erie Company Lands. Here too, he bought a supply of kettles, pans,and tin cups for himslf and his men and arranged to have their provisons of flour, pork, and wheat shipped from Owego to the Reserve via Oswego to Niagara-- where every item had to be unloaded and carried by land around the falls-- and thence to Presque Isle. On June 21, Simon left his Tioga land business in the hands of friends and proceeded with his surveyors, through the wilderness of Western New York, to Buffalo. Here they obtained a batteau with which they coasted up Lake Erie. Finally they arrived, on July 4,1798, on the mouth of Conneott. It was exactually two years before Moses Cleaveland's party of fifty men, women, and children took possession of the Connecticut Reserve by encamping at this same creek. Cleaveland's party christened the spot Port Independence and Fired a Federal Salute of 15 rounds and then the 16th in honor of New Connecticut. No such celebration marked Simon's arrival in 1798, but it was neverless an important day: From that day until his death in 1844, Simon would influence the settlement and development of the Western Reserve. *********************************************** To be con't---