OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: An Account in a Ledger
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
July 31, 2002
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Historical Collections of Ohio
The Kelley Family Records
The Simon Perkin Records at WRHS.
And Then They Went West
by Darlene E. Kelley
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From Moses Cleaveland Ledger--

"To a day spent with Perkins -- 2.00"
Moses Cleaveland, Erie Company Expense account of 1799.

It was very stormy that March day, but a short thick set man with a
broad face, rather dark, or brown complexion, journeyed from his home in
Canterbury to Norwich, Connecticut, on business with the newly formed
Erie Company. Some of his acquaintances said this man looked like an
Indian, and they called him OL'
Molock; others, of course, addressed Moses Cleaveland by his Connecticut
Militia title of General. But it was said fondly by his friends that "
he was capable of going through thick or thin in the business in which
he was engaged."  

Cleaveland's pressing business that stormy day was the employment of an
agent to handle the exploration, survey, and sale of the western lands
of the Erie Company. Cleaveland, Daniel Lathrop Coit, and Joseph Perkins
held as Trustees of this Company more than 125,000 acres of Connecticuts
Western Reserve Lands that had been drawn by the nineteen members of the
Erie Company through their investment in the Connecticut Land Company, a
coalition of companies formed in 1795 to purchase the property from the
State of Connecticut. The members of the Erie Company wanted an agent on
their land early that summer to meet the many buyers who were expected.
A Company meeting had, in fact been " warned " for April 2, to settle
his instructions; so it was urgent that an agent now be employed by the
three Trustees.

May 22, 1795, was the first time Simon Perkins had left home to travel
for new countries. He was then a hardy twenty three year old who liked
an outdoor life and exercise of riding on horseback. Leaving his
families farm home in Lisbon, Connecticut to meet with Cleaveland, he
knew his knowledge of surveying and record keeping which he carefully
recorded in a small leatherbound book, he could carry in his pocket,
would survive his journey. He was apparently self taught, and he had
learned his experience during the three summers of his youth in New York
learning how to make out land contracts, record deeds, collect debts and
taxes for his relatives and friends. He soon learned their were
difficulties involved in landowning; but he was convinced, as many men
of that period, that land was a good investment.He was
even willing to gamble on this convction, and he accepted land as part
payment for his services.

Besides Cleaveland, Daniel Lathrop Coit. was Treasurer-Trustee of the
Company. He lived with his wife and five children in a large white
gambel-roofed house in Norwich. He was forty three, a financially
successful importer of drugs; and he had combined with his
brother-in-law Joseph Howland and two friends, Elias and John Morgan. to
invest $ 81,863 in the Western Reserve Lands. Like Cleaveland, Coit was
optimistic about the future of the western country. He had pooled in the
Erie Company, in fact, over 29,000 acres of his land. A beak-nosed man
with a receding hairline, Coit had a gentle sense of humor and a great
amount of patience with the short comings of others. He would need both
humor and patience when Cleaveland and other proprieors caviled over
Company affairs or divisions of, as he called it, " the promised land. "

Now the third Trustee was Joseph Perkins, who was a cousin to Simon and
a Brigade-Major in the Twentieth Regiment of Connecticut's Militia. The
Major, uniformed in his blue coat and buff trousers, usually inspected
his Regiment when it held its festive drills in front of his house on
Norwich's Town Plain. The Major's occupation was that of a general
store owner and a merchant-shareholder with his uncle, Andrew Perkins.
They often engaged Captains Joseph Kelly and Thomas in vessels engaged
in the West Indies trade. Lumber, provisions, and livestock were
exported by the Andrew and Joseph Perkins Company from the wharf in that
part of Norwich called Chelsea Landing; rum, molasses, sugar, wine,
coffee, cotten, tobacco, indigo, and salt were brought back in the ship
" Patty "
operated by the above Captains and their crew from the West Indies, to
be sold by the Perkins Company at its store near the Landing.

Daniel Coit and The Major knew of Simon's experience as a land agent;
and knowing that he came from an old and highly respected family,
convinced Moses Cleaveland of Simons ability,  judgement and integrity.
Simon Perkins was descended from John Perkins who, according to family
records, arrived in America with Roger Williams in 1631. 
Descendants of John Perkins had first settled in Norwich and then
purchased , in 1695, a nearby thousand acre point of land between the
Quinebaugh and Shetucket river. Here, partly because the difficulty of
crossing the Shetucket to attend meetings in Norwich but also because of
their opposition to the revivalism at one time encouraged by the
Congressional Church, the Perkins family founded a separate
congregation, called the Newent Society. Some members of the family,
like the Major, eventually returned to Norwich to live and conduct
business. Simon's branch of the family had stayed on the point that the
townspeople  called " Perkins Crotch " and that became part of the
village of Lisbon.

And so it was decided that Simon should spend March 29 with Cleaveland
to discuss the Erie Company affairs. Now Cleaveland, a Yale graduate and
attorney, was to draw up the Company's agreement and furnish
instructions to their newly found agent. As a result of his own 1796
surveying trip as General Agent for the Connecticut Land Company,
Cleaveland could give Simon first hand information about conditions on
the Reserve. Since he was a Director of the Connecticut Land Company as
well as a Trustee of the Erie Company, he could in addition, acquaint
Simon with the history of the property and the problems involved in its
sale and settlement.

So thus the entry was recorded in General Moses Cleavelands Ledger--

" To a day spent with Perkins --- 2.00
March 29." 

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