OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 25 ************************************************************************ 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 28, 2005 ************************************************************************** Historical collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits - part 25 from Notes of S. Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Carrier Of Mail During the War of 1812 During September, 1812, war was being waged with the British and Indians on the frontier, and most of our able bodied men were away from home in Ohio, under the command of General Simon Perkins, in the defence of the Maumee valley. General Simon Perkins sent word to Warren that his sokdiers were without bullets, and to send a supply of bullets immediately. The ladies of Warren promptly moulded the lead into bullets, and mail carrier Asael Adams, Jr., who had just returned from an all day's ride from Pittsburg, carrying the mail, but was capable and willing to undertake the journey, started at once, without waiting for sleep, to carry on horseback a bushel of leaden bullets through the dense forests to the aid of General Perkins' brigade. Along with them he carried several important messages for the General as well as several letters to his men. Asael Adams Jr., was born in Canterbury, Connecticut, in July 1786, and came with his father, Asael Adams Sr., to Liberty township, Trunbull county, Ohio in 1800, with his brother-in-law Camden Cleaveland, a brother of Moses Cleaveland. Alexander Sutherland was postmaster at Newton, and Erastus Lane of Braceville, a letter carrier between Warren and Cleveland, brought the news of Hull's surrender. John Dover of Deerfield, so far as can be ascertained, was the longest in the employment of the government as mail carrier. His route was from Lisbon to Mansfield, via Canton and Wooster. He made this trip for more than forty years. Just before the coming of the stage coach, in some places in Ohio, mail was carried by oxen. During the war of 1812, carrying mail was extremely dangerous. Although the Indians had given permission for the government carriers to cross lands and the government had purchaed lands. The renegade Indians became a hazzard. Safety was the word, and carriers soon learned what to look for. Sometimes the carriers learned to take alternate routes when they learned of trouble, and this became as second nature to them. But the mails continued and became a trustworthy institution; one we all depended on. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Men of the Civil War "In a review of the strong personal forces which were arrayed in support of the Union, during the war of the Rebellion, and the lives which in various ways, were knitted into the history of the Western Reserve, probably none would criticize the placing in the front ranks, of those sturdy state executives, and martial spirits, David Tod and John Brough, and the giant champions of all Benjamin F. Wade and Joshua R. Giddings, sixty-six at the outbreak of war, was to die before its conclusion, as his country's representative in Canada. In the dispensation of Providence, nothing could be more fitting than that their dear homesteads and their hallowed graves should have been fixed within the same neighborhood. Great souls bound together on this earth, with mutual attraction working toward common ends, with the faith of true men looking steadily into each others eyes, and firmly clasping each others hands, it is beyond belief they ever parted! In the eyes of men, Wade's greater good fortune was to have lived upon earth to fight in the halls of Congress for those principles which were being upheld by the armies of the battlefield. Both Wade and Giddings are claimed by Ashtabula county. " +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Jay Cooke, Financier of the Union. In a far different way Jay Cooke was another, who almost alone upheld the financial piller of the Union. Jay Cooke, son of Ohio Congressman Eleutheros Cooke, was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1821. At the age of eighteen, he entered the private banking house of E. W. Clarke and Co., becoming a partner three years later. In 1861, he opened Jay Cooke and Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run, of the Civil War, the government realized that large sums of money were necessary to keep a strong army in the field. Cooke's younger brother, Henry, editor of the " Ohio State Journal " in Columbus, was well acquainted with Salmon P. Chase, the Ohio senator and governor, who bcame Lincoln's first Secretary of the Treasury. Henry Cooke arranged for his brother Jay to accompany Chase to New York, where he introduced Chase to the nation's banking community. The institutions privately underwrote the first fifty million dollars of the Union's Civil War effort. To continue the financing of additional millions to maintain the Union forces, Chase appointed Cooke as the government's sole financial bond agent. Cooke devised a system in which U.S. bonds could be redeemed at six percent interest in gold in not less than five years or more than twenty. He advertised the " five-twenties" in newspapers across the country, offering bonds in denominations as small as fifty dollars. By permitting purchasers to pay on the installment plan, Cooke made it possible for over three million small investors to buy bonds through his firm. By 1864, Cooke was raising money as fast as the war department could spend it--- nearly two million dollars a day. By war's end, Cooke had sold over a billion dollars in bonds, his Philadelphia banking house fourished as a result of the trust and acclaim garnered through his ability to finance the Civil War. The federal government has used Cooke's bond marketing strategies in all subsequent wars. After a twenty-year absence, Cooke, an avid fisherman, returned to Sandusky in 1864 to purchase Lake Erie's Gibraltar Island located in the harbor off Put-In-Bay. His brother, Pitt Cooke, oversaw the construction of the fifteen-room, stone summer home that the extended family occupied at least twice each summer for nearly sixty years. Hundreds of guests, soldiers, businessmen, statesmen, and politicians, joined the Cookes during their visits to " Cooke Castle " on Gibralter. When the family was not occupying the island, Jay Cooke offered hi home as a retreat to clergy throughout the midwest. Cooke recorded details of the summer visits in large journels. Eventually, Jay's son, the Reverend Henry E. Cooke, acted as the family historian,and began adding poetry, sketches, humerous anecdotes, and several thousand photgraphs of three generations of the Cooke family. In 1873, Cooke lost his fortune attempting to finance the Northern Pacific Railroad. Recouping his losses through silver mine investments, Cooke and his families of his four children; Jay,Jr,; Mrs. Charles D. ( Laura E. ) Barney; Mrs. John M. ( Sarah E.) Butler; and the Rev. Henry E. Cooke resumed their summer visits to Gilbralter. In addition to their Erie Island summer home, Cooke owned fishing lodges in Maine and Pennsylvania, as well as the Ogontz school for girls.( previously his Philaelphia residence.) Following Cooke's death, te families visits became less frequent. Gibralter passed to Cooke's daughter, Laura Cooke Barney. And in 1925, Laura Barney sold the island to philanthropist Julius F. Stone. Stone donated the island to the Ohio State University to develop a biology research laboratory and fish hatchery known today as the Franz Theodore Stone Laboratory. ** NOTE ** The Jay Cooke Journals and collections were donated to the Hayes Presidental Center by the Cooke descendants. Additional material, including the first four journals of the Gibralter Island records, are located at the Ohio State University Archives. The Hayes Presidential Center and the Ohio State University Archives produced a microfilm that includes all seven volumes of the records. The film is available at both institutions. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Garfield and McKinley The major generals whom the Western Reserve sent to the front were James A. Garfield, James B. McPherson, Quincy A. Gillmore, Jacob D. Cox, William B.Hazen and Mortimer D. Leggett. President Garfield was a native of Orange, Cuyahoga county; as a boy worked on the Ohio canal; studied law with David Tod, whom he met at Youngstown while driving boats from his Brier Hill mines to Cleveland; entered Geauga Seminary, at Chester, and taught at Hiram College, Portage county; finally read law with Albert G. Riddle, of Cleveland, and after his admission to the bar in 1858 and his election to the state senate in the following year, entered the Civil War as lieutenant colonel of the Forty-second Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He fought at Shiloh, Corinth, Chickamauga, and other battles, and in December, 1863, resigned his commission as major general to take his seat in congress. From that time, until his assassination in 1881, he belonged to the nation, rather than to any county of the Western Reserve. William McKinley, the other military character of the Reserve who became President of the United States, was Garfield's junior by thirteen years when te war opened, and advanced from a private in the ranks of the Twenty-third Regiment to colonelcy. He was born in Niles, Trumbull county, and after the war studied law and settled in Canton, Stark county, from which he was sent to congress. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ to be continued in part 26.