OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 101A ************************************************************************ 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 September 6, 2006 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio Tid Bits - Part 101 A by Darlene E. Kelley note by S. Kelly [ ] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid Bits - Part 101 A The New Connecticut The most dramatic role on the New Connecticut frontier was palyed by a man whose name is unmarked there today in bronze, brass or marble. This man belongs with the Cuyahoga valley's most select list of giants -- James Hillhouse. He should also be credited by Connecticut for that state's present outstnding school system. Men learned rather early that nature's apparently haphazzard sprawl of plant and rock and fish and and animal actually conceals highly precise patterns of life and death interdependency. But the New Connecticut planners had not seen that an equally precise economic survival balance evolved in the seeming chaos of haphazzard land settlement as practiced elsewhere. The Connecticut planners were going to take the chaos out of it, and spread the settlers evenly over the Reserve, allocating the land with great fairness and neatness of spacing. Playing God that way, even over only three million acres, brought disaster, bankruptcy, complete stagnation, and poverty. During the depths of this dispair, a giant strode upon the property. He gazed out of the frontiersman from placid obsidian eyes sunk in a high boned, Indian dark face. In fact, men called him the Sachem, and he looked like a powerful Narraganset. Lank as a crane, he walked among the New Connecticut settlers in knee buckles and powdered wig. His arrival brough fear, resentment, and personal attacks. Hillhouse was the official collector. He was sent by Connecticut to collect the money due. So how did this happen ? If you drive along both banks of the Cuyahoga and if you look at a map of the Western Reserve area just astride it, you will see names of towns and streets and creeks which, in most regions, would tell a reconstructible story of natural settlement. But since the Western Reserve was settled unnaturally by a precisely plotted and platted system, revolving strangely enough around a lottery type mechanism, the usual rules for reading the land don't apply. For example, though five distinguished Kelleys came and settled here, and operated extensively in land, not one town is named Kelley. [ Kelley's Island is an exception as it was in the Firelands and at that time was persumptionly known as Cunningham's Island. ] On the other hand, John Young's town bears his name though he came for only a brief stay. Almost every town has a Granger Street, yet Gideon Grager's contribution was highly localized. Not one town or county or street or creek is named Hillhouse, yet James Hillhouse, perhaps more than anyone created the Western Reseve. Back in Hartford, Connecticut, deeds were made out for as many 1/1,200,000ths of the three-million Western Reserve acres as their investment indicated, the whole price being $1,200,000. But specific plots of ground were not assigned. When the survey was finished and the land assessed, a ticket was made out for each specific section of land, classified as first, second, or third class land. The tickets were then separated into those categories, and five separate drawings held over the next five years. A man entitled to a thousand acres, drawing tickets from the three piles, might draw land in three different townships in three different ranges. Nothing prevented him from swapping tickets with someone else to consolidate his holdings, but this was his business. He might then elect one of the areas as his personal home-site, or he might not go to Ohio at all, merely selling the ground indicated on his ticket. Or he might elect to put the ticket in the hands of a land agent who was going west, like Stow, commisionaire of Cleaveland's party. At any rate, immigrants did not usually come west and look over the ground to see where he would settle. They generally had a ticket in pocket as they sailed or wagoned to the mouth of the Cuyahoga. [ a few entered from the south via Pittsburgh.] From there they inquired where to find the stake for the horizontal line to their township. They traveled upstream to that stake then inland along the survey line until they came to teir particular township, then along that township line until they found teir section. Townships were five miles on a side, 16,000 acres. Thus the pioneers of the Western Reserve did not settle in the traditional economic clusters at river mouths and trail crossings. They chose instead to live in geometric patterns -- neat and impractical and chopping holes in the big woods, and putting up isoated cabins surrounded on each side by hardwood loneliness. To the thoughtful men who conceived this plan it promised certain theoretical advantages. It was eminently fair and it so dispersed settlement that the whole area could develop simultaneously rather than consentrating population around attractive land features as under the casual method. It also placed people throughout the area in order to encourage defense against the British and Indians. Nevertheless these advantages broke up natural economic combinations whic made for development. The farmer found himself arbitrarily located near fine deposits of red kidney iron ore, which was to him only a nuisance. The ironmaster, who would normally settle near the ore, drew good farmland that he did not appreciate. Under the casual method of settlement, the ironmaster would seek out the ore. The miller, the fine millsites. The gunsmith or ironwright would locate near the ironmaster. The sailor near the port. But the drawing of lots created an economic incompetence, which was about to turn to disaster. This fact only heightened the heroism and drama as this most competent body of settlers invaded a hostile geography. Untimatey it would bring forward several giants, including James Hillhouse. Those settlers who came first, though they came in their own self interest, necessarily broke trail for hundreds over the next three decades. Being Connecticut men, they were accustomed to cleared land already mature and crop bearing. Despite the discription fom the surveying party, these immigrants were not prepared for a land completely forested with no break in the cover except at waterbodies, and no axle width gap in the undergrowth. The trees held a piece of night all day. John Young and a surveyor named Wolcott fought their way up the Mahoning from Fort Pitt to survey the section Young had drawn in the southeast corner of the Reserve. Now we met Nathaniel Doan, one of the few surveyors to come back as a settler. Recovered from the ague, he did establish a blacksmith shop on Superior Street in Cleaveland in 1798, according to his land contract. On the frontier, this blacksmith shop became the hub of engineering at a time when the main progress was engineering. Doan helped with the myriad mechanical necessities of a frontier, and for a long time, he was the only resource for shoeing the pack horses of surveyors who came to subdivide the samll parcels held by individual stockholders in the Connecticut Land Company. A settlement grew up around his shop where Newburgh Road crossed Euclid Road. It became known as Doan's Corners, though Doan himself moved four miles inland toward Euclid to escape the miasma from the river. Still he died young, in 1815. Turhand Kirtland, whose money had been invested in the Connecticut Land Company through Caleb Atwater, drew his land all scattered all over Kirtland, Burton, Auburn, Mecca, and Poland, Ohio. He set out from Wallingford, Connecticut, in 1798 to find his lands and to survey them into subparcels. In addition to his personal land, Kirtland ws an agent for the Connecticut Land Company. Part of his mission was to get Major Carter ad Mr. Spafford to pay $25 for their town lots in Cleaveland. But then, these two men had contributed so much to the area, and they had seen others awarded free lots for lesser but more specific services, and they expected generosity from the company. They requested a price of ten dollars per lot, refused to pay $ 25, saying they would move off thir lots. Kirtland wrote a letter back to the company recommending the company sell to these two heroes at ten dollars, " otherwise I sahll never expect to see the land settled. Mr. Carter has been of essential advantage to the inhabitants here, in helping them to provision in times of danger and scarcity, has never experienced any gratuity from the company, but complains of being hardly dealt by, in sundry instances." He went on to say Carter and Spafford both threatened to leave unless they could buy their land cheaper. En route to his own lands, Kirtland's handful of cattle kept straying away. The difficulty of trying to reach his lands, surveying them, and keeping the animals fed and assembled was enormous, yet not enough to discourage him nor keep him from recording in his diary.In doing so, he became a major contributor to hundreds who followed, because Kirtland hacked the road into Chardon's forest covered canyons. In the following year, Benjamin Tappan, Jr., left Connecticut to see to his father's lands in Ravenna. He entered by way of the Cuyahoga's mouth, boatd his goods upstream to Boston, and began chopping a road along the survey lines into what would become Ravenna. He went back to Boston on the Cuyahoga to sledge his stores into Ravenna, but he lost one ox, felled by clusters of enormous flies. A man stuck in the forest tied to a mountain of goods, he can neither move nor live without is in trouble. Tappen had spent all his money but a dollar on the trek west. He sent back to Erie, Pennsylvania, for a loan of money, while he walked across to John Young's town to find an ox for sale. It is not clear who he sent, nor how he negotiated without money. Work cattle were scarce, but he was able to locate an animal through James Hillouse. With the persuasive affability which would make him an important western Legislator, he struck a good price. Previously, Tappan had overtaken and come part way with another Connecticut immigrant, David Hudson of Goshen, Connecticut, en route to his Western Reserve Lands,Township 4, Range 10. Together they overtook Elias Harmon and wife who were heading for what would become Mantua. Harmon's boat broached and smashed in Lake Erie off Astabula. he went on cross counrty. Hudson bought and repaired the boat, shipped into Cleaveland, and sailed upstream. The water was low, requiring the boat to be towed across sand bars. The survey line leading to Hudson's Township 4, Range 10, took six days to find. Hudson was a humorless, physically powerful, and pious man with a delicate responsibility to man and a poetic feel for te land. He was a direct descendant of Hendrick Hudson of the Hudson River, whose youngest son was David. I direct descent then, came six David Hudsons to this one who founded the town on Range 10 in New Connecticut. His first night on his own ground, he lay out in the open in the rain ejoying the sensation. Hudson's two yoke of oxen were following in the care of Mr. Meachem, who brought them due south from lake Erie on a range line over precipitous ravines, crossing two rivers by raft. Therefore, Hudson first turned his 12 men to the job of opening an axe-width road in from the Cuyahoga. Over this road, all future settlers to the area freighted their possesions. Hudson and his men put up a log house and cleared land for winter wheat. In the fall, he left the men there while he went back to Connecticut for his family and more settlers. When for the second time he reached Township 4, range 10, now called Hudson, he assembled both groups for a Thanksgiving service in midwinter. Of all the towns in Ohio, Hudson probably most stands for the essence of the Connecticut Western Reserve.It reproduced Connecticut so faithfully that even today you would elieve yourself to be driving through a Connecticut town. David Hudson attracted a very high caliber of settler, and the town became the birth place of two famous Ohio Colleges. Western Reserve College in Hudson was modeled in 1826 on Connecticut's Yale, and staffed by Yale proffessors. The college held high standards, but it was in constant economic battle. In 1882, Amassa Stone of Cleveland offered the college $ 500.000 if it would remove to Cleveland. Its classical department was then named Adelbert College in memory of Stone's lost son. The vacated buildings at Hudson was occupied by a new institution, Western Reserve Academy. [ Today one of the nation's fine preparatory schools for boys]. Under Hudson's leadership a town grew very rapidly and solidly. As you'd expect of David Hudson, religious services began immediately, but a formal church - Congregational -- rose in 1802, and in the same year, a log school house. By 1807, there was a tannery run by Owen Brown, the father of the famous John Brown. David Hudson's daughter Anna, was the first white child born in Summit County. The first to die in the settlement ( 1808 ) was the mother of John Brown. The New Connecticut settlement which gained fastest start by far was Warren; it was not originally settled by the Connecticut Land Company men. Two men living in Washington County, Pennsylvania, Captain Ephraim Quinby and Richard Storer, had heard about New Connecticut and in 1798 decided to go over and have a look with the view to purchasing land. They were perhaps the most scientific of the early purchasers, except for Moses Warren who snapped up the salt lands near there. Captain Quinby selected land in relation to himself rather than fitting himself to a square drawn out of a hat. He selected Township 6, Range 10, and bought substantially, becoming the founder of Warren. Within a year, he had 16 white settlers in, and by 1801 the townof Warren was the biggest and most prosperous in New Connecticut. It became county seat of an enormous Trumbull County. Gideon Granger who had gone together with Oliver Phelps, investing $80,000 in the Land Company [ this is separate from Phelp's $168,000 ], drew his acreage 16 miles southwest of Cleveland. It was called Berea. Berea had little contact with the Cuyahoga valley in offsetting the stilted placement of people in arbitrary sqaures of land. Nearly every town in the valley has a Granger Street. General Granger was the Reserve's grapevine. Gaining a government mail contract, he rode from town to town, and being an enlightened and highly intelligent man he spread important news among the people; what trails wide enough for a wagon had been cut into what areas; where mills were being built to grind flour; who could shoe a horse or braze a drawbar chain; where there was a man who could make bricks; and etc. Granger was no ordinary rider, as later he became U.S. Postmaster General. Important among the town builders along the Cuyahoga was Joshua Stow of Middletown, Connecticut, a $ 6,000 investor in the Connecticut Land Company. He had come out with General Cleaveland's surveying party in charge of commissary. He was a tough 34 year old outdoorsma who often moved in advance of the surveying party hunting for game to preserve their regular rations. The Cuyahoga valley was rattlesanke countrym and Josh Stow became an expert at finding and killing snakes. To carry them, he would wrap them around his waist, six or eight per trip. In camp, he would clean, cook, and serve them. The men all said they tasted like sweet chicken, and relished them immensely. After the survey, Stow drew 5,000 acres north of Akron, and he came back to Ohio to oversee the surveying of his acreage for resale. Establishing the town of Stow, he then went into real estate operations in the eastern part of the Reserve. many thousands of property deeds in the Reserve today go back to an orginal land title signed by Stow in partnership with one of the Kelley brothers. But beyond Stow's individual pioneering in the Reserve, his influence becomes enormous in another way. It was Stow who brought the Kelley brothers who stayed to mold New Connecticut by selling land, establishing towns, moving rivers, building canals, laying railroads, making laws, and developing islands. His sister, Jemima, married Daniel Kelley, and it was he and their 5 sons, that helped lay the foundation of Cleaveland and surrounding areas. Daniel Kelley becoming Cleaveland's first elected President. His son was the first appointed. [ mayor in stature before becoming a bonifide city ]. Meanwhile, the lot drawing system of land ownership continued to cut isolated, helpless clearings in the three million acres of virgin oak, beech, maple, chestnut,and walnut. Judge Austin pushed in to the northeast corner with a small party to start Austinburg. He brought 150 cattle, the first real herd on the Reserve. Lewis Day and his boy came out of Granby, Connecticut with two others in a wagon, and pushed 25 miles west of Youngstown in 1799. That brought the first wagon width trail to Deerfield. Caleb Atwater then cut a township road into Deerfield from the west, hence that area had good communication. Very few ventured west of the Cuyahoga, though a dozen from Waterbury, Connecticut pushed across Ridgeville, Amherst, and Eaton. David Abbot purchased 1,800 acres astride the Hudson River and settled there in 1809. Vermillion was occupied in 1808. Hence the settlement of New Connecticut had its beginnings. Little did one know that these pioneers had overcome trials of hardships to contribute to that which actually made the State of Ohio what it has become today. The one of the most prosperous of States in the Union. But this is not the end of the story --- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid Bits con't in Part 101 B.