OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 21B ************************************************************************ 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 March 22, 2005 ************************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits- part 21 B +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid-Bits 21 B Cleaveland's Business Beginnings (con't ) The first Blacksmith shop was that of Nathaniel Doan. Blacksmithing was a necessity in a horseback age, and Doan was given a lot on Superior Street on condition he open and conduct a blacksmith shop, that the surveyors' horses might be shod. After the surveys had been completed, and after a siege of fever and ague when all nine members of his family were down with the plague at once. Doan moved to the region known thereafter as " Doans Corners." now Eucid and East105th Street. For a time the city itself was without a blacksmith. Then came Abram Hickox in 1808, who opened his smithy on the north side of Superior Street where the Johnson House later stood. At one time he had a shop south of Superior near Seneca. Later he had a small smithy on the corner of Erie Street and Hickox Lane. Hickox was a picturesque person. Over the door of his shop hung a sign, " Uncle Abram Works Here " with the print of a horseshoe in wood. He is said to have been honest and patriotic. On the Fourth of July, lacking canon, he rang his anvil, making a mighty noise. He was also the sexton and for years made all arrangements for burial of the dead. he wore, as a rule, a homespun gray suit, wide rimmed wool hat, steel-bowed spectacles and carried a stout hickory staff." He was quite a philosopher, and many earnest discussions went on in his smithy. Every pioneer was something of a builder-- the rough carpentry necessary to put up log cabins, shelves, and build a boat that would float and in which one could get about a little fair weather, was essential. But the first real builder, who had knowledge of building as a trade, was Levi Johnson, who turned up in 1808. He built the log courthouse and jail combined, the gallows on which the Indian Poccon Omic was hung ( which deserves special mention as the first execution ), the first frame house in Cleaveland proper, that of Judge Walworth on Seperior where the American House later stood and under which trains now come in to the terminal. He built the Buckeye House in 1811, for Rudolphus Edwards, out on Woodland Hills Avenue, the schooner " Ladies' Master in 1814, the schooner " Neptune " in 1817 and the first steamboat constructed in Cleaveland, the " Enterprise. " He sailed on the lake and in 1830 built the old stone lighthouse where the present one stands, then one at Cedar Point, and set bouys marking the channel in Sandusky Bay. He also built some seventeen hundred feet of the Cleaveland east government pier. The first boat built worthy the name was the " Zephyr " constructed by Major Carter in 1808. It was followed by the " Sally "-- Joel Thorpe, " Dove" -- Alex Simpson. A really pretentious boat, sixty tons, was the " Ohio," built by Murray and Bixby in 1810. The first steamboat on the lakes was the " Walk-in-the-Water, built--but not here-- by Captain Job Fish who had been an engineer for Fulton. Fulton is remembered as the builder of the " Clermont," first steamboat anywhere, nicknamed "Fulton's Folly" by the conservatives who were unable to believe that steam could move wheels and make a boat go. The first post office was established in 1805, with Elisha Norton as postmaster. Receipts for the first quarter of 1806 amounted to $2.83. " As early as 1801," says Kennedy, " the mail was brought to Warren, the seat of Trumbull County, once in two weeks, by way of Pittsburgh, Canfield and Youngstown, and that was the terminus of the mail route for a couple of years, before it came to Cleaveland. The route from Warren was by way of Deerfield, Ravenna and Hudson, and from Cleaveland to Detroit along the old Indian trail to Sandusky, Toledo and so on to Detroit; from Cleaveland it went to Warren via Painsville and Jefferson. A collection district for the south shore of the lake was also established this year, called the ' District of Erie' and John Walworth, of Painseville, was appointed collector." The first framed building of any sort hereabouts, was that of the office of mails and customs. It was built in 1809, and "regarded as a novelty with metropolitan suggestions." In 1809, the export trade with Canada was valued at fifty dollars. The first highway supervision was performed by a committee elected April 14,1804 consisting of Lorenzo Carter, Timothy Doan, James Kingsbury and Thaddeus Lacy, who had charge of roads from Cleaveland to Hudson, and around back along the ridge to Doans Corners and down town again. Their appointed tasks were as follows : Carter, the road from the City of Cleaveland to Hudson to Daniel Ruker's and the road from Cleaveland to Euclid, to the bridge near Tillotson's; Timothy Doan, the road from Isaac Tillotson's to the east line of the town of Euclid; Kingsbury, the road from Daniel Ruker's leading to Hudson, to the south line of the Town of Cleaveland. The first road to the westward was along the trail to Detroit. The state legislature, in 1809, granted an appropriation for a road from Cleaveland to the mouth of the Huron River. The committee was Lorenzo Carter and Nathaniel Doan of Cleaveland, Ebenezer Murray of Mentor. This was first called the " Cleaveland and Huron Road," then the " Milan State Road, " and as it advanced farther towards Detroit, finally " Detroit Road which it remains beyond Rocky River, being called " Detroit Avenue" through Cleaveland and Lakewood. The mail to and from Detroit was first carried on foot by Edward McCartney, The whole mail in 1809 weighed from five to seven pounds, and the mailman walked about thirty miles a day. Joseph Burke carried it to Hudson, Ravenna, Mesopotamia and around back via Painsville to Cleaveland. From about 1812 on, mails were carried on horseback, and by 1820 they attained the dignity of transportation by stagecoach. The first bank was the Commercial Bank of Lake Erie, undertaken in 1816. It failed in 1820, but managed to pay off its liabilities and was reorganized in 1832. It ran from this time till the expiration of its charter in 1842. The first newspaper was the Cleaveland Gazette and Commercial Register, springing upon the world in 1818. The Cleaveland Herald was first published in 1819. Somewhere between April 12th, 1832, and June 8th, 1833, the CLEAVELAND Herald changed its name to CLEVELAND Herald, and the name of the town changed with it. There is a break in the files over that period so the exact date cannot be determined. Many stories are told of the reason for this change. One is that the paper furnished one issue of the Advertiser was too small, and the printer had to drop a letter off its title. Kennedy rejects this as not being reasonable. More plausible, he says, is the theory that a " "sheep's foot" struck the A and battered it out of shape nd usefulness. The story most likely to be true, however, seems that told by Rufus P.Spalding before the Early Settlers' Association; " An act of piracy was committed on the word by a newspaper publisher, who, in procuring a new head-piece for his paper, found it convenient to increase the capacity of his iron frame by reducing the number of letters in the name of the city. Hence the Cleveland Advertiser, and not Moses Cleaveland, settled the orthography of the Forest City's name for all time to come. Generally this story is told in connection with the Herald rather than the Advertiser." ++++++++++++++ At any rate, a book containing the records of the township of Cleaveland spells the word Cleaveland from 1803 to 1832, the wavers a bit and finally drops the A. [ " This Cleveland of Ours" is trying to do as the Cleavlanders do-- it carries the A through the pioneer section, and drops it forever when, with the Canal Era, the village has definately grown into the City of Cleveland.] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ cont. in part 21c