OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 22 ************************************************************************ 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 25, 2005 ************************************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits --part 22 >From Notes collected by S. Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Real Settlers of New Connecticut Although the French ( both Protestant and Roman Catholic ), the Spanish, the Dutch, the Quaker, and the English ( Cavalier and Puritan ) colonized the new world, we are apt to think of the early inhabitant as the Massachusetts Puritan alone. Somehow the Puritan, especially the Pilgram, with his plain, dark clothes, his high hat and his determined countenance, impresses itself deeply upon our sub-consciousness. Just so do we give all the credit of the successful settling of the Western Reserve to the Connecticut emigrants, which is entirely incorrect. There were two ways to enter New Connecticut, namely, through New York State to Buffalo and along Lake Erie, or through Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, up the rivers. From the state of Pennsylvania came the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Scotch-Irish; these, with the New Yorker, joined the Connecticut Yankee in making of the new state of Ohio. Some of the truest and most helpful citizens were the Scotch-Irish; some of the most frugel and industrious were the Pennsylvania Dutch. The Yankee considered himself superior to his neighbors, who said " du bish " or had a brogue. His education as a rule was better, his family longer established in these United States, and he believed himself responsible for the development of the country. On the other hand, the early Dutch Pennsylvanian saw faults in his Yankee neighbor, and commented upon the same. The early Dutch housewife would say to her neighbor, when inviting her to stay to a meal. " It's not much we have, but anything is better than the weak tea and crackers of the Yankees." The " Dutchman " were frugal, neat, industrious, but liked good living. Early settlers in Pennsylvania uniformly testify to the excellant cooking of the Pennsylvania Dutch women. A Trumbull county man at the age of fifty, tells of the day when he was a young man, he taught school in western Pennsylvania, and remembers with pleasure, when he boarded around. A prominent citizen of Warren, whose grandparents were Pennsylvania Dutch, and whose mother and wife were both excellent housekeepers, gives credit to both for being successes as homemakers, but usually ends with " but no one ever quite came up to grandmother's cooking." It was the Scotch-Irish who made the mirth for the pioneers, particularly at " frolic times," as house-raisings, log-rollings, and the like occassions were called. They cared less for money than did the Yankee or the German, and did not leave land fortunes to their descendants. They did, however, one thing for which they are never given credit. They, and not the men from the state of Blue Laws, were first in establishing and maintaining churches. Lest we my be tossing our heads in pride, we who trace back to our Connecticut forefather, let us see what others thought and think of us. W.H. Hunter, of Chillicothe, in an address at Philadelphia, on " Influence of Pennsylvania on Ohio, " says: " The claims made for the Puritan settlement at Marietta gave us an example of Puritan audicity; the New England settlements on the Western Reserve give us examples of Yankee ingenuity. In Connecticut he made nutmegs of wood; in Ohio he makes maple molasses of glucose and hickory bark. In New England the Puritan bored the Quaker tongue with red-hot poker; in Ohio he dearly loves to roast Democrats. The Reserve was the home of crankisms. Joseph Smith started the Morman church in Lake county. And there were others." The Connecticut pioneer impressed himself on the Western Reserve history because he was usually a college man. He became a surveyor, the lawyer, the judge, the legislator, the governor, because he was mentally equiped for such positions. Almost every leading jurist of that day was a Yale graduate. It is known that for many years before the organization of the Connecticut Land Company, as early as 1755, people have traveled from Penneylvania to Salt Springs, between Niles and Warren, for the purpose of making salt. Long vats and kettles showing much wear and little care were early found by traders and explorers. Men who were identified with the early times have written of seeing travelers with kettles thrown over the back of a horse on their way to the springs. Salt was expensive, costing, according to some authorities, six dollars a bushel; others, sixteen dollars a barrel. The water there was brackish and cost of making too expensive to be profitable. Some of the salt spring kettles later found in a spot near Braceville, where the Indians used them for making maple sugar, and within the later years they still existed. So far as we are concerned, with the exception of the most needed salt, nothing good ever came out of the Salt Sprng region. The first man who owned te tract --- Judge Parsons -- was drowned and men stationed in one of the cabins to watch the goods belonging to a Beaver firm was killed. The white men who constructed cabins there were in constant fear of the Indians, and were not financially repaid for their trouble. " The Pennsylvanians who had recourse to it during the Revolution erected cabins there. In 1785 Colonel Brodhead, commanding troops at Fort Pitt, had orders to dispossess them, and did so. The Indians soon burned the cabins they had erected." Here occurred the first murder on the Reserve, and here, time and time again, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, people have had hope of making fotunes from the mineral water, only to give up in despair later. In 1906/07 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad acquired the land, and now, where once men, white and red, boiled water into salt, while they drank whiskey and fought; where women and children suffered from fear of the red man; where men invested time and money to no purpose, runs a great trunk line, and men and women sleep and eat as they pass over that spot where so much unhappiness existed, and never think of Indians or murder or even salt, for the latter served in the diner, is served without cost. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ First Land Purchases General Samuel H. Parsons, of Connecticut, whose father was a distinguished clergyman, and whose mother ( a descendant of Henry Wocott ) was a strong character, was the first lawyer, and the first purchaser of land on the Western Reserve. He was an early friend of John Adams, a Yale graduate, took an active interest in colonial politics, and became on of the boldest of American generals. Old records in the hands of the family attribute to him the planning of the siege of Ticonderoga, which was the first hostile move in the war of the Revolution. Congress, in 1785, appointed him as one of the commissioners to treat with the Indians for cessions of land. Cincinnati stands on one of the portions ceded. Two years later he was appointed judge for the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio river, and in 1789 became chief justice of the Northwest Territory. Having traveled through this country, he was familiar with the land, and finally bought from the commissioners appointed by the Connecticut legislature to sell land, a tract situated in the townships now known as Lordstown, Weathersfield, Jackson, and Austintown. The deed to this twenty-five thousand acres is on record in the Trumbull county courthouse, and all records and maps agree as to its bounderies. He chose this spot, undoubtedly, because the Indians and traders had cleared land round about, because the springs found there contained brackish water from which he hoped later to manufature salt, and because Pittsburgh was comparatively near at hand and stores could be gotten at Beaver and other points on the river. He, however, never occupied this purchase. He was drowned, as above stated, in the Beaver river, probably at the falls, when returning east. Little or no money had actually been paid down for the land, but his heirs claimed it nevertheless. From Webb's manuscript we learn: " And although the Connectict Land Company ran their township and range line regardless of this claim, and although they in the proceedings at the time called it only a ' pretend claim,' yet, in making partition of their lands, they reserved land enough in the townships Nos 2 and 3, in the third and fourth range, to satisfy this claim, which they never aparted and which they ultimately abandoned to the heirs and assigns of Gerneral Parsons." +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ First Land Purchaser The rules and regualtions of the Connecticut Land Company are of great interest. Every possibility of misunderstanding is provided for, minor details are mentioned, and the document shows the workmanship of the careful, conservative New England mind. The directors of the company were Oliver Phelps, Henry Champion, Roger Newberry, and Samuel Mathews, Jr. Following isa list of the surveying party of 1796: General Moses Cleaveland, Superintenant Augustus Porter, Principal Surveyor, and Deputy Superintendant. Seth Pease, Astronomer and Surveyor. Amos Spafford, John Milton Holley, Richard M. Stoddard and Moses Warren, Surveyors. Joshua Stow, Commissary. Theodore Shepard, Physician. Employees of the Company: Joseph Tinker, Daniel Shulay. Boatman. Joseph McIntyre. George Proudfoot. Francis Gray. Samuel Forbes. Amos Sawtel. Stephen Benton. Amos Barber. Samuel Hungerford. William B. Hall. Samuel Davenport. Asa Mason. Amzi Atwater. Michael Coffin. Elisha Ayers. Thomas Harris. Norman Wilcox. Timothy Dunham. George Gooding. Shadrach Benham. Samuel Agnew. Wareham Shepard. David Beard. John Briant. Titus V. Munson. Joseph Landon. Charles Parker. Ezekiel Morly. Nathaniel Doan. Luke Hanchet. James Halket. James Hamiton. Olney F. Rice. John Lock. Samuel Barnes. Stephen Burbank. We are told in several original manuscripts that this party consisted of fifty, but as the above numbers only forty-six, Gun, who was to have charge of the stores at Conneaut; Stiles, who was to have like position at Cleaveland; Chapman and Perry, who were to furnish fresh meat and trade with the Indians, must have made up the number. In some of the original records the full list of men are given with these words, " and two females." So unused were makers of books and keepers of records to giving a woman's name, unless she were queen or sorceress, that this seemed nothing unusual. These " two females," who made the first real homes on the Reserve, were Ann, the wife of Elija Gun, and Tabiatha Currie, the wife of Job Stiles. Not only did they keep house, one at Conneaut and the other at Cleaveland, but they kept them so well that the surveyors took themselves there upon the slightest pretext. They also had an oversight and care of the company. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Continued in part 23.