OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Tidbits of Ohio -- Part 90 ************************************************************************ 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 Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know your Ohio Tid-Bits - Part 90. by Darlene E. Kelley notes taken from myself and S.Kelly [ ] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid Bits - Part 90 Cleveland's Hands of Invention It is a world belief that artists are not practical. But when the mind is wedded to the scientific, it can accomplish great things. The destinies of Cleveland were influenced by a man of the Da Vinci type. This was Jeptha H. Wade, who was a successful portrait painter who lived in Adrian, Michigan. His scientific bent led him to experiment with the camera. He made the first daguerreotype taken in the Middle West. On a chance visit to Baltimore, Wade witnessed Samuel F.B. Morse send a message over the first telegraph line. This proved the turning point of his life and he said farewell to the brush and palette. The insulator of the Morse instrument was imperfect. The young artist invented the Wade insulator, adding to the facility which messages could be sent and received. In 1847, Wade studied the constuction and equipment of telegraph lines in the field. He strung the first line between Detroit and Jackson. He then ran lines from Detroit to Cleveland and Buffalo. The Wade line from Cleveland to St. Louis was completed in 1849. A telegraph office had been opened in the old Weddell House on West Sixth Street. As the eager citizens of Cleveland gathered around the instrument installed on September 15, 1847, they were startled when it began to act apparent;y of its own accord. A witness from the local news wrote; " The machine all at once began to rattle like the bones of a skeleton under galvanic battery and the line was reported in order." Mr. Wade consolidated the existing independent lines running out of Cleveland. This consolidation formed the kernel of the Western Union Telegraph Company. With the imagination of the artist, Wade proposed in 1861 a transcontinental telegraph line. His plans were considered nebular, altogether visionary and full of folly. Wade, however undaunted, personally supervised the construction of a line to the Pacific. In August, 1861, he sent a jubilant message over the newly constructed line to San Francisco. The route of the first transcontinental railroad followed the Wade wires. The Pacific Telegraph Company was consolidated with the Western Union under Mr. Wade's directorship. Mr. Wade, who made New York's news, San Francisco's breakfast topic, was rewarded with great wealth. He enriched Cleveland with many generous gifts. Wade Park being his most notable memorial. ["Jeptha Homer Wade had been born in Senecca County, New York on August 11, 1811, the last of the nine children of Jeptha and Sara Allan Wade. As a youth he apprenticed with a tanner, worked in a brick factory and worked as a carpenter. In 1832, he married Rebecca Facer with whom he had one son, Randall Palmer Wade. Rebecca Wade died in 1836, and in the following year he remarried to Susan Fleming. He ran a woodworking company until 1837 when poor health required a change in occupation. For ten years he worked as a portait and landscape artist. He experimented with the use of a camera to aid him with his portrait painting, and was the first person west of New York to take daguerreotype. By 1847, he became interested in the telegraph industry and worked as a sub contractor. He constructed a telegraph line between Detroit and Jackson, Michigan, part of the Buffalo and Milwaukee Telegraph Company and the first line in operation west of Buffalo, New York. He moved to Milan, Ohio in 1849, where he established a telegraph office and organized the Cleveland Cincinnati Telegraph Company,and utilized the Morse telegraph system. Wade soon became an agent for the Morse system with an office in Columbus, Ohio, where he lived after 1850. Subsequntly Wade built telegraph lines through the midwest and west. He developed a network of telegraph lines known as the " Wade Lines " that stretched from St Louis to San Francisco. In 1857 he moved to Cleveland where he was director of several railroad companies and an incorporator of banks and business enterprises. In 1866, he served as President of the Western Union Telegraph but after one year resigned for reasons of health. Mr. Wade also served as vice president or director of a number of public institutons such as the Workhouse and House of Refuge, the Homeopathic Hospital, and the Cleveland Protestant Orphan Asylum. Jeptha Wade was instrumental in the founding of Case Institute of Applied Science in 1880. In 1881, Wade gave the City of Cleveland seventy-five acres of land near East 107th Street and Euclid Avenue for a public park and art gallery. In 1882, it was deeded to the city. During the sme year Amasa Stone allowed the Western Reserve University to move from rural Hudson, Ohio and the Case School of Applied Sciences relocated to Doan's Corners from Downtown Cleveland, as did the Western Reserve Historical Society more than a decade later. Jeptha Wade died in 1890. He had accumulated great wealth and left monies for the establishment of the University Circle and other Cleveland establishments." ] ++++++++++++++++++++ More Light The motto of Victor Hugo was " More Light." Charles Brush accepted this motto as his very own. Brush, a sturdy lad, was living on a farm at Euclid, east of Cleveland, in 1860. He attended school in Cleveland studying chemistry, physics and mathematics at the old Central High. He made curious experiments, to the amazement of his instructors. At thirteen, he had discovered the relationships between magnets, and constructed a telescope, grinding the lenses and fitting them into the instrument. In 1867, Charles Brush displayed an intense interest in the discussions of an electric light which had been created in Paris, by current from a battery. The young man went to the University of Michigan. He applied himself to two problems : first - how to construct a dynamo to give the amount and kind of current to operate lamps in a circuit; Second - to find how to work a lamp without its flickering. In 1876, he gave the world the Brush dynamo, a horse treat-mill on a farm east of Cleveland supplying the power. His first are lamps consisting of two carbon lamps slightly separate. The current jumped from carbon to carbon, giving off " a dazzling white light." Twelve arc lamps that were installed in Monumental Park, now the Public Square. On the evening of April 29, 1879, the new lights sent rays over the assembled citizens. Many of them looked at the lights through smoked glasses to protect the eyes. The most emphatic protest against the arc lamp was voiced by women who affirmed that it lighted their complexions to disadvantage. David Belasco now lights his stages to compliment the types of coloring of his woman stars. The Brush arc lamp has given a sense of security to the people of nearly every city in the world. It has lighted the dark corners from which crept the menace of crime and vice. The Brush dynamo is the grandparent of the tremendous modern generators, the lesser sums of the world, furnishing light, heat, and power. The Brush Company has for many years supplied the world with the materials for this method of lighting. Eventually Brush, Thompson and Edison merged the production of their inventions to form the General Electric Company. +++++++++++++++++++++ The Central Viaduct Streetcar Accident The Central Viaduct streetcar accident occurred on a dark, foggy night of November 16, 1895. Cleveland City Railway streetcar No 642, on the Cedar-Jennings route, plunged through the open draw of the Central Viaduct into the Cuyahoga River over 100' below. The mishap resulted in 17 deaths, makng it the worst traction accident in the U.S. at that time and the worst such disaster in Cleveland's history. It was the second rip that evening for motorman, August Rogers and conductor Edward Hoffman. There were 21 people aboard, many of them women and children who had boarded the car downtown. Visibility was poor as the car approached the derailer switch. Hoffman went ahead, threw the switch, and motioned the car forward, jumping abroard the rear platorm as the car passed. Unknown to either men, the draw was open, permitting the passage of a tug towing two vessels, and the power cutoff had not operated for some time. Peering through the mist, Rogers thought he saw that the draw was open over the tracks, but since there was still current, he dismissed the idea. As he increased the throttle, the mist cleared, revealing the open draw. Slamming the transmission into reverse, Rogers and 3 passengers leaped to safety. Crashing through the warning fence, the streetcar plunged downward, striking a support piling and rebounding into 18' of water. Only one passenger survived the fall, but later succmbed to injuries. ++++++++++++++++++++ The Astor House The Astor House was for many years considered to be Cleveland's oldest structure. Although its authenticity was never etablished, the hand cut, chestnut timbered Astor House was generally believed to have been built in the 1780's as a trading post by the Northwestern Fur Co., a venture associated with John Jacob Astor. Some accounts attribute its designation as the " Astor House " to Moses Cleaveland and his party of surveyors. It was thought to have been originally situated on the western bank of the Cuyahoga River, near its mouth. Based on various accounts it is possible that a few structures existed near this location prior to Cleaveland's arrival in 1796, put up by traders or shipwrecked sailors. Jas. Kingsbury, one of the first settlers, reportedly lived in one of these for a year before his own house was built. In 1844, Robert Sanderson purchased what was considered to have been the Astor House from Joel Scranton. As improvements to the mouth of the river threatened the house's destruction. Sanderson had it dismantled and removed to Vermont & W. 28th, on the city's west side, where he used it for several years as a carpentry shop and later as a residence. By the late 1800's, the Asor House was popularly believed to be the oldest house in Cleveland, and was moved for several times as the city grew. It finally ended up on the eastern edge of Edgewater Park, where for many years it was under consideration as a museum. [ City officials ignored popular sentiment and ordered it destroyed on October 12, 1922. ] ++++++++++++++++++ The Public Square The center of the City of Cleveland marks the Public Square. The original plan of the Town and Village of Cleveland prepared in 1796 by the Connecticut Land Co., called for a 9.5 acre public square bisected by 2 wide streets, Superior and Ontario. It was conceived as the open space of a traditional New England town plan, intended to serve as a common grazing area and meeting place. In 1857 Superior and Ontario Streets were truncated at Public Square, and a white double railed fence enclosed the grounds, which were lanscaped. In 1861 the city council passed a ordinance changing the name of the Public Square to " Memorial Park " in recognition of the Memorial to Commodore Perry that was placed there. But the name " Public Square " continues in popular use, and Ontario and Superior were reopened to traffic through the square in 1867. It was used a the site of the first sucessful demonstration of electric street lights on April 29, 1879. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid-Bits continued in part 91.