OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Simon Perkins, Surveying Book, 1795.
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
August 2, 2002
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Historical Collections of Ohio
The Kelley Family Records
The Simon Perkins Records at WRHS
container # 72.
And Then They Went West
by Darlene E. Kelley
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Simon Perkins, Surveying Book, 1795.

" July 4, 1798--
Arrived at the mouth of Conneott."

It was a illustrious and successful group that gathered at the Norwich
Court House on April 2 at one o'clock for the first 
" warned " meeting of the Erie Company.

The business at Chelsea Landing   expanded. Some town grants, had come
to an end and business in Norwich was booming. Chelsea Landing  became a
focal point in merchant trades and many ships were used in the shipping
business.

Some of this group that had gathered --
The Major ( Joseph Perkins ), Colonel Christopher Leffingwell, Joseph
Howland, Joseph Williams, and Lynde McCurdy, had been associated during
the Revolution in a short lived organization that seized and sold for
charitable purposes all the smuggled British goods they could discover.
Colonel Leffingwell, a dignified looking man, had also distinquished
himself during the Revolution for his service as a member of the
Committee of Correspondence and for his bravery as Captain of a light
infantry troop which had gone to the defense of neighboring New London.
He was well established in Norwich in building a paper mill, a chocolate
mill, and a highly successful stocking weaving factory, with a yearly
production of twelve to fifteen hundred pairs of worsted, cotten, linen,
and silk stockings.[ The Norwich Jubilee--
" Historical Discourse, " by Daniel Coit Gilman.] WRHS. 

Joseph Howland and Joseph Williams were equally successful in the
shipping business. Howland owned, with some of his relatives, the ship "
Charlotte" which had been built at Chelsea Landing much earlier, and a
fleet of brigs, schooners, and sloops which carried livestock and other
cargo to the West Indies, which became so well known that in 1801 and
1802, the warring British and French would seek contacts with him to
supply their forces in the West Indies. [ Francis Manwaring Calkins "
History of Norwich, Conn.] Joseph Williams was the principal owner of
six trading vessels, one of which the " Snow" was made at Chelsea
Landing and Joseph Kelly's son Joseph was killed on in a ship board
explosion near the Barbadoes and buried there. Williams vessels were
primarily engaged in the West Indies trade, but his sloop
" Prosperity " carried on a profitble trade with the northern ports of
South America.

Several others in this group were like the Major, sucessful merchants;
from Lynde McCurdy one could buy fine broadcloths, laces, and even
Indian, Damascus and Persian silks; from John Kinsman, brother-in-law to
Simon and Representative in the Connecticut General Assembly, one could
buy a hat made in Kinsman's own shop.

Among the illustrious of the group there was , in addition to Zephaniah
Swift, Senator Uriah Tracy. Tracy owned a store in Norwich with Joseph
Coit, also a member of the Erie Company. and was an attorney, a former
member of Connecticut's General Assembly, and a congressional associate
of Hamilton, Ames, and Adams.

And there was also Samuel Huntingham Jr, the adopted son, nephew, and
namesake of the late Samuel Huntington who had signed the Declaration of
Independence and for more than ten years had been the Governor of
Connecticut. The junior Huntington had been educated at Darmouth and
Yale, had traveled in Europe, and was in 1798 an attorney in Norwich
with offices in the Courthouse. With his background and education he had
a sucessful political career in Connecticut.

Asahel and Jabez Adams, Penuel Cheney, Erastus and Thomas Huntington,
Daniel Lathop, and William Wheeler Williams completed the membership of
the Erie Company.

As might be expected, the nineteen proprietors were very demanding in
their instructions to Simon Perkins. According to the documents drawn up
by Cleaveland, Simon was to be on the land in July and continue there
three months and longer if the business of the Company should require,
employing his time in selling, surveying, laying out and exploring.  

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 the said Reserve at a price of $ 1.50
for the first 240 acres and $ 1.00 per acre thereafter. The land was to
be selcted in two tracts within specified townships and he was to settle
on one of the said tracts of the 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 English grain six acres the first year, on the first
mentioned tract. If there 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 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.

If 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 anxious to promote settlement, they had 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 agreed to take three men on the land to build a log
house, and clear as much land and get in the ground from twenty to forty
acres of wheat. In the summer following ( 1799 ) he was to build a
gristmill and a sawmill, in the township of his choosing. When Simon
found Williams, he was to measure off the land he had chosen and see to
it that he was fulfilling his Erie Company agreement.

The terms of sale Simon was to follow were as demanding as his duties,
considering the shortage of money in the country and the physical
difficulties involved in settling a new land. He was restricted from
selling any land at less than a $1 per acre, and he was to secure five
to ten percent of the purchase money or a note on interest at the time
of sale.
The balance of payment were to be due in three years, with interest
compounded at six percent, due annually. In addition he was to do
settling duties, not less than those for which he was conditioned. 

The insurrountable conditions of the proprietors requests of the Company
and the stipulations that Simon could give purchasers were upon the
fulfillment of the terms of purchase, a deed that would 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 purcashing land in the
Reserve, and would turn elsewhere for settlement.

Simon had to be optimistic about the future of the western country, and
the protential value of of the Western Reserve lands when he signed on
April 14, as to the terms imposed by the Erie Company.
To leave his comfortable home to go into wild, unexplored and lawless
country, became a challenge, that only he could endure. He never could
turn down a good challenge.

Finally on April 19, with the best wishes of Cleaveland, the Major, and
Daniel Coit for his "prosperity, health, and return," Simon left home
for the "New Connecticut."

His way first took him first to the Connecticut Land Company's office in
the Hartford Courthouse where on April 24, he copied from Ephrain 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. Simon's attempt to settle this
dispute so that the land could be brought into market 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 Oswego, New York, where he employed
James Pumpelly, Rueben Forgason, and Daniel McQuigg to assist him in
surveying the Erie Company lands. Here too he bought a supply of
kettles, pans, and tin cups for himself and his men and arranged to have
their provisions of flour, pork,and wheat shipped from Oswego 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 proceeded with his surveyors, according to Elisha
Whittlesey's account of the journey 
" through the wilderness of Western New York to Buffalo, where they
obtained a batteau with which they coasted up Lake
Erie." Finally, on July 4,1798, Simon and his party " arrived at the
mouth of Conneott."

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Note **

It was exactly two years before that Moses Cleaveland's party of fifty
men. women and children took possession of the Connecticut Reserve by
encamping at this same creek. In commemoration of the beginning of the
settlement of the " good and promised land, which in time may raise her
head amongst the most enlightened & improved States," Cleaveland's party
christened the spot Port Independence and "fired a Federal Salute of 15
rounds & then the 16th in honor of the New Connecticut.

" No such celebration marked Simon's arrival in 1799, but it was
neverless an important day, as Simon would influence the settlement and
development of the Western Reserve." [Col Elisha Whittlesey.] 

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