OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 3 ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information is included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 January 29, 2005 ************************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio And They Went West S.L. Kelly diaries Series of Articles by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits - part 3. With added Notes in [ ]. ************************************************************************** Western Reserve Historical Library Found ! One place I can get lost in and spend hours. Research, dream, and relax. I can be anywhere-- explore -- put myself in adventures and be the boy I once was, as I grew to manhood. They have boxes and boxes of files, books, journels, and documents, to which is at my fingertips. A friendly place, to do my research, and check correct dates. Thanks go to the endowments of our Cleveland founders such as Dr. Dudley P. Allen, Orlando J. Hodge, Gen. Simon Perkins, Ambrose Swasey, Wm Bingham and etc. There are many life time members of this society; [ which some, are our relaitives,] who had the forethought in preserving an endless variety of information, and documentation of Clevelands past. One of many of these members were Herman Alfred Kelley, who was born May 15, 1859 at Kelley's Island, Ohio, son of Alfred Stow Kelley and Hannah Farr Kelley. [ He died at Cleveland, Feb 2, 1925. ] The Kelley family are of old New England stock, having come to Cleveland in the the earliest days, and played an important part in the development of both city and state. Mr. Kelley's great uncle, Alfred Kelley was the first president of Cleveland Village, and his great grandfather, Daniel Kelley, second president. Both were prominent in politics and the early Cleveland history. Mr. Kelley had the advantages of a very liberal education, having studied at Buchtel College, Akron, at Harvard Law School, and later post-graduate work at Goettingen University in Germany. Following his chosen profession at the bar, his first interests were centered on the Admiraltry, due perhaps to his association on Kelley's Island in Lake Erie, where as counsel, his name appeared in one of the most litigations, connected with that branch of the law, in that section of the country. Mr. Kelley at one time held the position of first assistant corporation councel of Cleveland. He was also chairman of the Morris Plan Bank's Board, director of the National City Bank, a member of the law firm of Hoyt, Dustin, Kelley, McKeehan and Andrews, and President of the Horace Kelley Art Foundation. As Secretary of the Cleveland Museum of Art, he gave perhaps his most distinguished public service, working untiringly upon the determination that Cleveland's history and arts be preserved. Mr. Kelley was a avid preserver of history. He wrote the Geneology Book of the Kelley history, in which he had patented and is presrved in the Library of Congress. Much of his works are preserved in this Society, as well as the Kelley family history manuscripts. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Kelleys Island and Points of Interests The interesting and valuable possession of the United States, is Kelley's Island, which lies one-half miles south of the International boundary line which separates the United States from Canada, and is not only the northern boundary line of the State of Ohio, but also the township of Kelley's Island. The line passes through a group or archipelago of islands that lies in the western part of Lake Erie. The best known island in this group is Put-in-Bay, made famous in the United States by Commodore Perry, who won the Battle of Lake Erie near that island in 1813 and retired to the shelter of its bay, after the engagement, to bury the dead and repair his fleet. Kelley's Island is about eight miles from Put-in-Bay in a southernly direction, and it is about nine miles northwest in a direct line from the foot of Columbus Street in Sandusky, Ohio, although the distance by steamboat channel is twelve miles. The nearest main land is the Marblehead peninsula. The little town of Marlehead is due south of the island, separated from it by a channel about three and one-half miles wide. West of Marblehead is Lakeside, the well known summer resort, and " Chatauqua " which is only four miles from the island. Cedar point, at the entrance of Sandusky Bay, is eight miles away. The boats that serve the islands during the navigation season stops at Kelley's Island as it passes on its trips between Sandusky and Put-in-Bay. Ships that ply between Detroit and Cedar Point and Sandusky usually pass the island through the South passage, as the channel south of the island is called. Those from Cleveland to Detroit take the North passage beween Kelley's Isalnd and Point au Pele Island. The latter is in Canadian waters, and so, too, is little " Middle Island, " which is about half way between the two larger islands. " Pelee," as the Canadan Island is generally called, is the largest Island in the Archipelago. It is almost due north of Kelley's Island and eight miles from it. Kelley's Island has been celebrated since very early days for the excellant black bass fishing to be had along its shores. Vineyards and wine cellars have made the island famous, with its rich limestone soil and even temperature have produced grapes of a quality equalled rarely elsewhere, either in flavor or in sweetness. The superior quality of limestone of Kelley's Island has been long recognized, and since the small beginnings of almost over one hundred years ago there has been excavated an enormous quanity of stone which has been shipped to all parts of the Country. Kelley's Island has the most remarkable glacerial grooves found in America. Its quarries, besides their commercial value, are constantly yielding fossils of great interest and value to the scientist. Almost every day produces something of the kind. Then too, many interesting fossils can be found in the stones used in the many walls or fences and also in the pebbles and rocks along the beach. Besides these, are the relics of the Indians, who formally lived on the Island. Even now, the plow turns up an occasional Indian pipe or arrow head, and there are several great rocks bearing inscriptions and other evidences of Indian work upon them to be seen on the Island shores. The botanist will find the Island unusually rich in rare flowers. The bird watcher will find it a paradise. North Bay is a beautiful soft, smooth sand beach on which a family may play ad bathe. He can wade out for hundreds of feet in water from two to four feet deep. It is a picturesque shore, with its white cresent of sand stretching away to the east and gradually curving westward, with a background of of lovely trees ovrhanging and shading it. Long Point sends out its rocky promontory fully a mile into blue Lake Erie and affords a sheltering bay from the easterly winds. It itself is a beauty spot. It is a narrow and and long point of rocks overgrown with great trees, and it extends for a mile into the water. The west shore of Long Point is high and craggy, and the east shore slopes gradually into the water. Living on the Island is like living on a great immovable boat which can neither rock nor sink. In the summer time it is a delightful experience to live there. One can fish, row, bathe, make excursions to the various places of interest. He can botanize and collect curiosities, bird watch, or just sit in the shade and let the cool breezes fan him. The views of the distant shores are constantly changing with the various lights of morning, noon, and night. At night, the lights of Cedar Point and Lakeside and the flash of the lighthouse at Marblehead gleam across the water and beautify the scene, but sunsets at Kelley's Island, especially as seen from Long Point, or the north shore are never forgotten. The great Perry Monument standing on Put-in-Bay is silhouetted against the golden west. The Bass Islands lie dark and soft beneath the golden sky, and the great red sun sinks to rest seemingly in the waters of the Lake. It is a sight to behold. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Indian Occupation On Kelley's Island Many years before the white man commenced to occupy the country about the shores of Lake Erie, the island was the home of at least two Indian villages. It is not certain that the villages are contemporaneous, nor to what nation they belonged. These village sites were indicated by low earth works or embankments beginning and ending at the south shore of the island and extending backward in a semi circle so as to embrace about seven acres in one, and four and one-half acres in the other. When discovered, they were overgrown with heavy timber. The trees were perhaps two hundred years old, possibly much older. We know that early white settlers made clearings for themselves by cutting down large trees that grew on the old Indian village sights. Some have thought that the villages were occupied by members of the Erie or Cat Indian nation, that was destroyed by the Mohawks about 1655; but this date is not certain; it may have been much earlier. We know that the Eries formally lived on the shores of Lake Erie, and, as the islands are easily accessible, no doubt the Eries occupied them.There have been found on the island a large number and variety of Indian stone utensils, such as grinding mortars and pestles, spear and arrow heads, pipes, hammers, skinning knives, and the like. The smaller village occupied a site just west of a pond near the south shore of the island. On the shore, close to the village, but a few hundred feet west of its western embankment, is a curiously carved limestone rock. Its flat top, 32 feet long and 21 feet wide is covered with figures and lines that have been cut into it. The engravings were shallow when first discovered by Mr. Charles Olmsted of Connecticut, who was visiting the island in 1834, a few months after the Kelley brothers had purchased it. The report of its discovery reached Government authorities at Washington, who were interested in preserving the records of the Indians, and in consequence Captain Eastman of the United States Army was detailed to make copies of it and also a map or drawing of the island, showing the Indian village sites and several mounds found on the island. These drawings were included in the United States publication of 1853, a large volume prepared under the direction of the celebrated Schoolcraft, whose Indian collections and records of Indian customs is the most complete ever compiled. He pronounced the inscriptions found on this rock to be the finest samples of Indian pictograph work that he had seen. There is a small size plaster-of-paris replica of this rock in the museum of the Western Reserve Historical Society at Cleveland, Ohio. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Lake Erie -- A Great Resouce. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and like the other Great Lakes, it is constantly evolving. Named for the Iroquois word for " Cat," Erie is the 11th largest lake in the world. Because of its shallow depth and southern location, Erie is the most biologically productive, as it can be seen by its claim as a huge freshwater commercial fishery and one of the most awesome walleye and smallmouth sportfisheries on earth. The Great lakes are the largest freshwater bodies on the planet. During the Ice Age, the snow and ice piled up in several areas, and like footprints, the weight of the ice and snow left huge indentations in the area. When the earth's temperature began to rise, the glaciers retreated north, leaving melted snow and ice within the basins. Encompassing 94,000 square miles, these lakes drain more than twice as much land. [ They say that more than one-tenth of the population of the United States and one-quarter of the Canadian population live within the Great Lakes basin. ] When a furious northeast storm drives the ice fields down upon Lake Eries islands, they can drive great sheets of ice several hunded feet inland and destroy cottages and other buildings along their shores that are too near the water. No one who has not seen it, can not realize the tremendous power of a great body of ice when it is driven by a storm. The crashing and rending is tremendous, as sheet after sheet rises one above another, sliding up and over the crest, to fall shattered into a million glittering fragments, which are in turn covered by the oncoming and seemingly irresistible body of ice extending perhaps fifty miles in length, shoved ashore by the wind and its own momentum. Rising from Lake Erie's Western Basin, the Lake Erie Islands are over 9.000- year- old remenants of the ice age. As the earth shifted, plates of rock ( largely limestone and dolomite ) erupted above the water and formed the Islands. South Bass, Middle Bass, and Kelley's Island are the largest and most publicly assessible islands of the more then two dozen islands that are scattered throughout the basin. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ continued in Part 4.