OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 99 : Issue 322 Today's Topics: #1 Erie Co. History Part 10 [LeaAnn ] ------------------------------ X-Message: #1 Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 23:21:54 -0700 From: LeaAnn Subject: Erie Co. History Part 10 Historical Collections of Ohio Henry Howe LL.D. Erie County Travelling Notes-- Ohio is the native State of those two eminent electricians, Chas. Francis Brush, born in Euclid, near Cleveland, in 1849, and Thomas Alva Edison, born in Milan in 1847. At noon, July 20th, I left the train at Milan to visit the birthplace of the latter. The station is down in the valley, an ascending the hill I gained the plain on which the village stands. In the center is a neat square of an acre covered with maples and evergreens. On this stands a soldiers monument surmounted by an eagle and inscribed with the names of Milan's dead heroes. No spot could be more quiet. Scarcely a soul was in sight, the spirit of repose seemed to rest there in undisturbed slumber. Two old men, octogenarians, gazed upon me as I neared them, and pausing in their presence I made known my errand, whereupon one of them, Mr. Darling, took me to Edison's birthplace. It is on Choate Avenue, and now the residence of Mrs. Sarah Talcott. It is a neat brick cottage on the edge of a hill which overlooks the valley of the Huron, with a fine view, sixty or eighty feet below, of river, bridge, canal, railroad and rich farming country beyond. My venerable conductor could give me but a single reminiscence of the inventor, and that was as a child in frocks, too young to read or spell, when he saw him seated on the ground on the little village green, grasping a piece of chalk and copying on a board the letters of a store sign near by. It was a bright beginning, an ordinary child would not have done such a thing. In the evening Mr. Ashley, an elderly gentleman, the village jeweler, gave me some items. The father of Mr. Edison was from Canada; the mother, originally a Miss Elliott, an American. He became a resident of Milan about 1842. He was a man of magnificent physique and so athletic that when at the war period, although about sixty years of age, not a single man in an entire Michigan regiment could equal him in length of running leap. His occupation in Milan was the making of shingles by hand from wood imported from Canada. He had a number of men under him, and it was quite an industry. The wood was brought here in what are called bolts; a bolt was three feet long and made two shingles, was sawn in two by hand and then split and shaved. None but first class timber could be used, and such shingles far outlasted those now made by machinery with their cross-grain cut. Mr. Ashley said he shingled his house in 1844, and now, after a lapse of forty two years, it is in good condition. The Edison family removed to Michigan, and they being in humble circumstances, young Edison at the age of twelve took the position of newsboy on the Grand Trunk Line running into Detroit. The little schooling he received was rom his mother, who had been a teacher, but he acquired the habit of reading, studied chemistry and made experiments when on the train. Later he became interested in the operations of the telegraph, which he witnessed in the railroad stations, and improvised rude means of transmitting messages from his fathers house in Port Huron to that of a neighbor. Finally, a station master, whose child he had rescued in from of an incoming train, taught him telegraph operating, when he followed that profession and experimented in electric science, with results so surprising and useful as to gain for him undying fame. The original owner of the land on which Milan stands was John Beatty, a native of the north of Ireland. He was the largest landowner in the Fire-lands, and the grandfather of General John Beatty, who has favored us with this sketch of him, accompanied with some racy anecdotes: Among the more prominent of the early settlers of Erie County was John Beatty, formerly of New London, Connecticut. His first visit to Ohio was made in 1810, at which time he bought some 40,000 acres within the present limits of Erie and Huron, of what were then known as the Fire-lands. In 1815 he removed with his family to this wilderness and built his first residence five miles north of Sandusky, on what is still known to the older residents of that section as the "stone house place." When the township of Perkins was organized Mr. Beatty was made its first clerk. Subsequently he was appointed postmaster, and for many years thereafter he served the pioneers as Justice of the Peace. About 1828 he removed to Sandusky, and in 1833 was elected Mayor of that city. He died in 1845, and is till remembered as an upright, intelligent, warm-hearted, hospitable gentleman. The church edifice now standing on the public square of Sandusky, and occupied at this date by the Lutherans, was built at his cost and donated by him to the Wesleyan Methodist Society. John Beatty was a local preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and from 1815 to 1819 on almost every Sabbath met the pioneers in their log school houses or at their homes and addressed them very acceptably on religious subjects. He was, however, a hot-tempered, impulsive, generous, obstinate Irishman, who never succeeded in reaching that degree of perfection which enabled him to love his enemies and offer the left cheek to an adversary who had smitten him on the right. An Accommodating Postmaster-- In 1816, or thereabouts, a post-office was established and Beatty appointed postmaster. The era of cheap transportation and of cheap postage had not arrived. The settlers were poor; few of them could raise the shilling with which to pay the postage on a letter, but it was hard to have it withheld simply because they were poor and had no money. The new postmaster proved equal to the occasion; he gave them their letters and never made returns to the department. When called upon to do so, he replied that he had received no money from the office, and therefore had none to return, and instead of being indebted to the government, the latter was in fact indebted to him. This sort of logic, however satisfactory to the settlers, was by no means pleasing to the Post-Office department, and so the government in 1819 discontinued the office, and thus afforded Mr. Beatty greater leisure to look after the spiritual welfare of his neighbors. He was the original proprietor of the land on which the town of Milan now stands; the sites on the banks on the Huron river was naturally a very pretty one. Frederick Christian Deucke, a Moravian missionary, had, in 1804, established a mission there and called the place Petquoting, a very handsome name by the way, and one which the people should never have abandoned. In 1814, Mr. Ebenezer Merry, having bought the place, laid out a village, and in honor of the first owner called it Beatty. An Audacious Seizure-- Among the first, if not the first vessel built in what is now Erie County, was one built by Abijah Hewitt, Eleazer Bell and a man named Montgomery on the bay shore a few miles southeast of Sandusky. In one of its first voyages it brought to Sandusky a cargo comprising a stock of general merchandise for Mr. Beatty, and among other things a cask of brandy which had not been entered at the custom house. The vessel was consequently seized and subsequently confiscated. Mr. Beatty's merchandise was put under lock and guard and the case reported to the department. The mails moved slowly in those days; time passed, and conscious of no fault on his part respecting the matter, Beatty grew impatient, and finally called his friends about him, drove his teams on to the wharf, put revenue officers and their employees aside, broke open the doors of the warehouse, and carried off his merchandise. All this was not difficult to do; the troublesome part of the affair came afterward, and resulted not from the cask of smuggled brandy, but from the violent and unwarrantable manner in which he had regained possession of his goods. The United States government was a big thing, even then, and no single citizen could afford to defy it, as Mr. Beatty discovered some years afterwards, when compelled to pay the costs and penalties growing out of this unfortunate transaction. The Candle Story-- While a resident of New London, Connecticut, a boy stole from Mr. Beatty a box of candles; the thief was promptly arrested and arraigned before a magistrate; a witness appeared who testified that the boy was guilty as charged, and Beatty being called to prove the value of the property, swore that "the candles were worth four dollars, every penny of it." Under the law respecting petty offense at that time in force in Conn., when the property stolen was worth from four dollars upward, the penalty was whipping at the post! The magistrate was about to pass sentence, when Beatty realized for the first time the terrible nature of the punishment; his anger had by this time cooled, and a feeling of pity for the boy supplanting every other emotion, he took the witness stand again and said: "If it please your honor I desire to correct my testimony. I swore that the candles were worth four dollars, but I omitted to add that that was the retail price; as the boy took a whole box, I'll put them to him at three dollars and thirty three cents." The boy was not whipped. Jay Cooke's Start-- Mr. Pit Cooke once told me how his brother Jay happened to get into the banking business, and as nearly as I can recollect it was as follows: The Cookes were living in a house on Columbus Avenue (Sandusky), near the present site of the Second National Bank. One day, when the family were seated at the dinner table, Eleutheros Cooke, the father, said in a spirit of pleasantry: "Well boys, you must look out for yourselves. I have sold this house to Squire Beatty, and we have no home now." Jay was the only one who took the matter seriously. He obtained a situation in a store that afternoon, subsequently accompanied his employer to Philadelphia, and this opened the way for him to the position of clerk in a banking house, and from this humble start in life, he became the financial agent of the United States. The Rev. Alvan Coe, a very worthy and devout man, at an early age established a school for Indian boys, on the Fire-lands in the vicinity of Milan, where he sought to instruct them in the mysteries of religion and teach them to read and write. The father of one of the Indian boys came over from the Sandusky river to visit his son, and while lingering in the vicinity wandered into a distillery. As was the custom in those days, the proprietor offered him a cup of whiskey. The Indian shook his head, and with much dignity said: "My boy tell me, Mr. Coe say, Ingin no drink, good man: go up much happy. Ingin drink, bad man: go down burn much." Then looking wistfully at the whiskey he picked it up, and raising it slowly to his lips said: " Maybe Mr. Coe tell d_ _n lie," and drank it down. -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #322 *******************************************