OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 88 ************************************************************************ 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 August 18, 2006 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collectons of Ohio And Then they Went West Know Your Ohio Tid-Bits - Part 88 by Darlene E.Kelley notes by S. Kelly ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid-bits part 88 Mastery of the Inland Seas Industry without transportation is simply routine by which day to day needs are supplied. There come a few decorative objects to satisfy the urge for self expression in art, which is the soul of the people. The Navajo Indians made their blankets and pottery for their own pleasure rather for trade [ However today it is a huge profitable business.] But the white man has always been rovers, the early settlers of the Western Reserve had more than domestic ambitions. The inheritence of the English and French traditions of commercial adventure moved them to the conquest of the Great Lakes. The first sail boat to part the waters of Lake Erie was the " Griffin, " built near Buffalo by La Salle. The voyager of Rouen directed the practical construction of the " Griffin." Father Louis Hennepin kept alive the faith and enthusiasm of their fellow explorers and the Indian helpers. The " Griffin " was launched in the spring of 1679. It was forty-five ton burden and armed with five cannon. The " Griffin " touched at Detroit, Mackinac and at Green Bay, and loaded with a rich cargo of furs, started on its trip. La Salle and his leaders had left the boat, continuing their explorations. The famous " Griffin " and its rich cargo never reached its haven. For centuries, the indians in their canoes had carried on primitive barter along the edges of the lakes. But no Indian had the courage to go straight across. To the awe of the Redskins, the white navigators in their sturdy French bateaux propelled by a crew of paddlers, went directly across the lakes. In 1808, Major Carter launched a schooner lightly dubbed the " Zephyr," which she certainly was not. The "Zephyr" carried thirty tons and made regular trips with furs, grindstones, salt, merchandise and iron between Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit, the present route of the floating hostelries of the Cleveland and Buffalo and the Detroit and Cleveland lines. Levi Johnson, the Sir Christopher Wren of Cleveland's architects and builders, who constructed the first courthouse; the first frame house in the city an many of the early office structures, built the " Pilot " in a yard at the site of the present Opera House. Johnson's craft was hauled to the river with much urging and straining by twenty-eight oxen. In the libraries of men who have a passion for the sea and a fervent love for the shapley ships that won victories over great waters, there are models of the clippers developed after the War of 1812. These three masted boats were trim and speedy, with well turned bows and broad sterns. Some of the most famous carried five masts and were of two thousand five hundred tons. These glorious swift sailors were of white oak, the deck house and spars being of pine. Michigan's straightest timber went into the masts. And it is tokon of affection of their masters for these sailing boats that many of them were christened with feminine names. Thomas Quayle was the most eminent boat designer of the time. With the depletion of the forests and the introduction of the steam, the most romantic full rigged craft were banished from our waterways. They live in memories of the old marine men and in the admiration of youthful readers of adventure tales. The first steam boat to put in at Cleveland harbor was the famous " Walk-in-the-Water." named for a fiendly Indian who was an advisor of the pioneers of Buffalo. On the first day of September, 1818, the people of Cleveland gathered on the shore on the bluff overlooking the lake to watch this curious craft approach the town. The " Walk-in-the-Water" made eight to ten miles per hour. Cord-wood. piled high on the deck, supplied its first fuel. Inspired by this steam propelled boat, Johnson constructed the " Enterprise in 1824. The " Enterprise " was luxuriosly fitted, so the Western Reservists throught, the cabins were for passengers. By 1830 there were five passenger boats plying through Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit. Aside from the fact that the side wheelers had a fire or explosion occasionly, they were fairly safe and moderately comforable. Some folks preferred to ride horse back from Buffalo to Cleveland rather than risk the trip on this " devilish contraption." The fear expressed that a side wheeler might lose one of its wheels and the boat would turn on its side. The first boat bearing the proud name " City of Cleveland " had a steam whisle and was superior to the other craft on the lake in that she could vent her emotions. The lordly " Empire " was another side wheeler of great fame. The " Empire " cabins were furnished in the gaudy Americn style of decoration and advertised a crusine under the direction of a chef, and also bands and entertainment. They even had a cabaret. We who live among the softer indulgences of life are stirred by tales of hardship and endurance. We are trilled by the stories of the early side wheelers whose decks and cabins were battered by cord wood, which shifted in the relentless storms. the graceful side wheels gave way to hidden propellers. Many of the old boats were newly equipped. Then railroads came, and the passenger traffic by boat lost favor. Iron, coal, copper, limestone, and grain became chief cargos of the lake boats. From the 1870's on the commerce of the " land locked seas" grew in volume, until it can be said that Liverpool receives less tonnage in a year than Cleveland. The mighty achievemnet of the lake freighter can best be pictured in contrasts. The brig " Columbia " brought one hundred and thirty tons of ore from Marquette in 1855. In the infancy of Cleveland's shipping, it took four days to load three hundred tons. Stagings were then built inside the holds of the old freighters and ore shoveled by hand to the platform and then to the dock. A week was consumed in unloading three hundred tons. Four out of five of the steel lake freighters are Cleveland owned. The father of the iron carrying lines was the Cleveland Iron Company, organized in 1849 by Samuel Mather, Sr., and his friends. In 1870, the Great Lakes boasted three iron freighters. We must pay tribute to Captain Henry Coffinberry and James Wallace, who organized the Globe Shipbuilding Company. These men believed that a steel ship would float, contrary to the ideas of the old shipbuilders, who affirmed that only timber would keep above water. Coffinberry and Wallace organized their ship building, acquired dry-docks, ways, and shops. The first steel freighter was the steamer " Onoko." This boat earned enough silver to fill its hold before the prophecy of the old ship builders came to pass and the waters closed over its decks. Today the passenger ships have regained the popularity of yore. The "See and Bee " and its companions are floating town houses with drawing rooms and rival of saloons of Euclid Ave, going from Cleveland to Buffalo is like walking through foyers and restaurants of a hotel or club. Little resemblance is there to the water washed decks of the " Griffin." +++++++++++++++ The living are judged by their personalities and the dead by their record of their accomplishments. And many of their achievements of the settelers of Cleveland entitle them to an illuminated page in Cleveland history. By 1834, they had cut a canal from Cleveland to Portsmouth. This canal is 309 miles long. One has to compare it with the longest canals in the world to appreciate the labors of the Ohio canal builders. The Erie canal extends like a silver ribbon across the Empire State for 363 miles. The Ganges canal in India is a royal water passage of 350 miles. The Grand canal in China, a thousand years in the building, goes 800 miles through the Celestial Empire. many famous canals are less than one half the length of the Ohio canal. Alfred Kelley, the first chief executive of Cleveland, promoted its canals. He was appointed state canal commisioner but provided with insufficient funds. No one had faith enough in the undertaking even to expect to see the system completed. The state gave Kelley permission to make the cut and the people extnded their good wishes. Kelley became a martyr to the cause of canals. He divested himself of personal comfort. With his family, he occupied a hut along the line of the first canal to keep an eye onthe construction. In 1820, Cleveland was a tiny lake port with less than two hundred inhabitants, Sandusky and Astabula were its serious rivals. Had destiny used Alfred Kelley, who lived and labored for Cleveland, in some other vineyard, the cities present position might be less auspicious. Kelley was inspired by the successful completion of the Erie Canal under the direction of Governor De Witt Clinton of New York. He foresaw that a canal from the interior of the State to Cleveland would make this lake port the shipping market of the Ohio basin. On July 4th, 1824, there was a celebration of the beginning of the work on the Ohio canal. The Governor of New York, of the long line of the Clintons, broke the ground. In 1834, a water route from Cleveland to Portsmouth was realized and the trip was made in eighty hours. The passenger boats, known as "packets," were drawn by three horses, single file, with a boy driver mounted on the rear steed. The passengers dined, slept, conversed or wrote letters in a cabin hall, each according to his inclination or power of concentration. Seymour Dunbar is the authority for the statement that on one occasion one hundred men were crowded into a room designed for the accomodation of forty two. There was a separate compartment for woman and children, the division was maintained even during the serving of meals. The maintenance of good nature in traveling on a canal packet was the test of one's spirit of democracy. A man who removed his shoes before retiring in the packet berth was considered a " fop" and unneecessarily fastidious. The crew of a canal boat consisted of a commanding captain, two hard working steersman, two juvenile drivers and the cooks. While other members of the crew had rest periods, it is said that the cook " worked all the time." Canal boat traveling had much to commend it to those of the lackadaisical tempement. Canal passage was safe. Dunbar poetizes this mode of travel: " No more delightful experience of travel could be experienced in all the country than that encountered by a canal boat passenger while moving through a region of wooded hills during the hours of a moonlit summer night. Ahead he could see the plodding horses and their driver. The lights from the open windows gleamed on the towpath and the rugged hillsides, and each new turn of the waterways brought into vision some new scene of shadowy loveliness." The popularity of canal traffic was attested by the fact that more than nineteen thousand passengers arrived in Cleveland by canal in 1843. And so, Alfred Kelley's vision was vindicated. Like Alfred of old, he was surnamed " the Great," he proved his case. " Going to Cleveland " was early made the vogue through the agency of the canal boat, despite considerable discomfort and low bridge hazzards. This was Cleveland's shopping district given initial impetus. The canal boats brought wool, flour, wheat, coal to Cleveland. One barge brought a cargo of coal in 1828. There was a vain endeavor to market it about the town. Wood was plentiful. "Why should one soil his jacket and soot the chimmey of his house with this black stuff?" At last Philo Scovil, mine host of the Franklin Tavern, was induced to burn it in his bar room grate. Men and dogs soon gathered about to bask in the continuous and unvarying warmth. And thus Old King Coal persuaded the poeple to allow him to become the servant of all. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid-bits continued in part 89.