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 323 Today's Topics: #1 Erie Co. History Part 11 [LeaAnn ] ------------------------------ X-Message: #1 Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 01:02:37 -0700 From: LeaAnn Subject: Erie Co. History Part 11 Historical Collections of Ohio Henry Howe LL.D. Erie County BERLIN HEIGHTS, is a village on the line of the N.Y. St. L.& C.R.R., which has three churches and about 500 inhabitants. Census of 1880 was 424. School census 1886, 208; Hugh A. Myers, superintendent. It is the largest of the three villages of Berlin Township, the other two being Ceylon and Berlinville. The township of Berlin from a small beginning has become noted for the perfection of its various fruits and the skill of its horticulturists. The proximity to the lake prevents damaging frosts, and the soil is well adapted to the apple, pear, peach, and grape. The pioneers at an early day were determined to have orchards, and began to plant trees before the ground was clear of the forests. Canada was the nearest place from whence fruit trees could be obtained, and in 1812 John Hoak and Mr. Fleming, of Huron, crossed the lake, and returned with a boat load of trees, apple and pear. Some of these old trees are now standing, vigorous and of enormous size and productiveness. One of the pear trees is seventy feet in height, with a girth of eight feet nine inches eighteen inches from the ground; an apple tree is over nine feet in girth. A quarter of a century ago Berlin Heights widely attracted attention from the organization therein of a Socialistic or Free Love Society; only a single citizen of the township was identified with the movement, its supporters being drawn from various States. Three successive communities were established and each failed. The last was the Berlin Community, or Christian Republic; it commenced in 1865, and had twelve adult members and six children and lived about one year. The Socialists started journals, which had in succession brief careers, but striking names, as Social Revolutionist, Age of Freedom, Good Time Coming, The New Republic, The Optimist, and Kingdom of Heaven, etc. One of the papers, The Age of Freedom, issued in 1858, was so obnoxious that twenty Berlin women seized the mail-sack which Frank Barry, the editor had brought on his shoulders to the post-office, loaded with copies, and made a bonfire of them in the street. The author of the historical sketch of Berlin Heights, from which the foregoing items are derived, says: "The drifting to this section of so many individuals who, to use their own phrase, were 'intensely individualized,; and who remained after the complete failure of their schemes, has had an influence on the character of the town. They engaged in fruit-growing, have multiplied the small farms, and added to the prosperity and intellectual life of the people. From the beginning their honesty was never questioned, however mistaken their ideas." This author, Hudson Tuttle, was born here in 1836, in a log cabin on the spot where he now has a productive fruit farm of between 200 and 300 acres of orchards and vineyards. He is known to the outside world by his spiritualistic and other works, and his wife, Mrs. Emma Tuttle, by her two volumes of poems; "Blossoms of our Spring" and songs which have been set to music, as "My Lost Darling," "The Unseen City," and "Beautiful Claribel." Hon. Almon Ruggles, the original surveyor of the "Fire-lands," was a resident of Berlin and died in 1840 in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He came in 1805 from Danbury, Conn., to survey the "Sufferers lands," as by the Fire-lands were sometimes termed. In addition to his salary he was permitted to select one mile square anywhere on the lake shore within the limits of his survey at one dollar per acre. He selected the land in the township of Berlin. His early life was struggle with adversity, and he had but six months schooling. He obtained his first book by catching woodchucks, tanning the skins and braiding them into whip lashes for market; and later he became a school teacher. He was a man of great kindness of heart, had a store of general merchandise and trusted all those who could not pay. It was said of him that he might have been very rich had he been disposed to grind the face of poverty. He preferred to live more unselfishly and merit the confidence and respect of his fellows. He not only encouraged the early settlers with material aid, but with cheerful looks and kind words. He represented this senatorial district in the State legislature in 1816-17-19, when the district consisted of the counties of Ashtabula, Geauga, Portage, Cuyahoga and Huron. He was associate judge for several years under the old constitution. His ability, his integrity, his knowledge of the country and the people eminently qualified him for the places he filled. He was an earnest worker in the Whig party, and a personal friend of Gen. Harrison. Mr. Tuttle, from whose township history the notice of Almon Ruggles is derived, draws a refreshing picture of virtue in his sketch of Rev. Phineas Barker Barber of Berlin. He was a Methodist preacher who died in 1877 at the age of eighty four. His ministry commenced in Ohio in 1830, when he could stand in his own door and shoot deer and other game, which he frequently did. During the fifty eight years of his ministry he never received a dollar fro preaching, but supported his family by hard labor on his farm. His endurance was wonderful. He preached every Sunday and his appointments were from five to twenty miles apart; in the early times he went through the wilderness on foot. He also attended on an average three funerals a week, and invariably suffered with a sick headache after preaching. His long and useful life was filled with labor and adorned with love. HURON, on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Huron river, is nine miles east of Sandusky and fifty six miles west of Cleveland, on the L.S.&M.S. and N.&H. Railroad. Newspaper: Erie County Reporter, Independent, D.H. Clock, publisher. Churches: 1 Presbyterian, 1 Methodist and 1 German Evangelical. Bank: Huron Banking Co., V. Fries, president; H.W. Rand, cashier. Manufactures and Industries-- One of the largest fishing industries on the lakes is located here, employing 150 men. About 500 tons are annually frozen during the winter months and 2,000 tons salted during the fall and spring. Its manufactures are tackle blocks, mast hoops and a patent shifting seat fro top buggies. Population in 1880, 1,038. School census in 1886, 371; C.K. Smoyer, superintendent. Huron has one of the best harbors on the lake, with about fifteen feet of water in the channel and room enough for all the shipping on the lake. The French had a trading post at the mouth of the Huron river about the year 1749. The Moravian missionaries, consisting of a few white settlers and Indians, located on a part of the southeast corner of Huron and the northeast corner of Milan townships, which they abandoned previous to the Revolutionary war. In the latter part of the last century or beginning of this, John Baptiste Flemond or Fleming from Montreal opened a trading station and dealt with the Indians on the east bank of the Huron about two miles from its mouth. He at one time assisted the surveyors in surveying the Fire-lands. CASTALIA, is a neat village on the line of the I.B.&W. and L.E.&W. Railroads at the head of Coal Creek, five miles southwest of Sandusky City, It borders on a beautiful prairie of about 3,000 acres; was laid out in 1836 by Marshall Burton and named from the Grecian fount. The phenomena presented by the Castalia Springs has excited considerable curiosity and interest. At Castalia, a volume of water called Cold Creek, which forms quite a river, flows up from several deep orifices in the limestone rock and supplies in its descent of fifty seven feet to Sandusky bay, three miles distant, the motive power for several mills. Being fed by subterranean fountains it is not much affected by floods and droughts. In its natural channel this creek ran through a piece of prairie covering several hundred acres into a quagmire and "muskrat garden." It now runs nearly its whole length through an artificial channel or mill-race. In 1810 a grist mill was built near the head of Cold Creek which ground corn until the settlers were driven away by the news of Hull's surrender. This was probably the first grist mill on the Fire-lands. Similar springs to the Castalia are found in all limestone countries. The water is so pure that the smallest particle can be seen at the bottom, and when the sun is at the meridian all the objects at the bottom, logs, stumps, etc., reflect the hues of the rainbow, forming a view of great beauty. The constituents of the water are lime, soda, magnesia and iron, and it petrifies all objects, as grass, stumps, moss, etc., which come in contact with it. The water wheels of the mills upon it are imperishable from decay in consequence of their being incrusted by petrifaction. The water is very cold but never freezes, and at its point of entrance to the lake prevents the formation there of ice; it maintains nearly the same temperature summer and winter. In 1870 Mr. John Hoyt procured a couple of thousand of eggs of the brook or speckled trout, made hatching troughs and was successful in raising trout on Cold Creek. The stream is now well stocked with trout and is leased to two clubs of gentlemen for sporting purposes, "The Castalia Spring Club" and the "Cold Creek Trout Club." The village of VENICE is on Sandusky bay, near the mouth of Cold Creek, and on the L.S.&M.S.R.R. In the summer of 1817 the village was founded and the mill-race was begun to bring Cold Creek to the present site of the Venice mills. The flouring mills here have performed a very important part in the development of the country. The Venice flouring mills, completed in 1833, established the first permanent cash market for wheat in the "Fire-lands." The first 100 barrels of flour in the merchant work was sent to New York. On its arrival hundreds of people went to see it, for it was the first shipment of extra flour from Ohio, and some even predicted that in time Ohio might furnish them with several thousand barrels of flour a year. Much of the flour made in Ohio before 1840 was sent West for market. In 1836 Oliver Newberry purchased 500 barrels of flour, at $8 per barrel, and took it to Chicago, then a struggling frontier village, and sold it for $20 a barrel, citizens holding a public meeting thanking him for not asking $50. It was all the flour the people of Chicago had for the winter. Board in Chicago was at that early day enormously high, owing to the scarcity of food, the country around being then an unproductive wilderness. Before the starting of the flouring mills in the Fire-lands, the earliest settlers in some cases took their wheat in boats over the lake to the French mills, near Detroit. A touching incident is told of a party of men who started with their years wheat in a boat and landed near the close of the day on one of the islands and then went inland a short distance to select a place to camp overnight. On their return to the shore, lo and behold their boat was nowhere to be seen. A sudden gust of wind had freed it from its mooring and it had floated off with its precious load upon the broad expanse of Lake Erie. What situation could be more deplorable! They were on a lone island and no way of escape. There were no passing vessels to rescue them. The lake was at that time but a solitude of water. Thoughts of their families, starvation for them and starvation for themselves seemed inevitable. Poor men! They broke down, shed tears, and passed a night of woe. Morning came. Heartbroken, they wandered down to the shore and gazed upon the wild waste of waters. Then all at once, in a little nook, safe and close in shore, they discovered their boat. A change of wind in the night had floated it back as silently as it had floated away. VERMILLION is on the L.S.&M.S. and N.Y.C. and St. L. R.R., at the mouth of the Vermillion river, which was so named by the Indians on account of a paint they found along its banks. Census of Vermillion in 1880, 1,069. School census 1886, 329; J.Q. Versoy, principal. The first settlers in this vicinity came between the years 1808 and 1810 and were Wm. Haddy, William Austin, George and John Sherarts, Enoch Smith, Horatio Perry, Solomon Parsons, Benjamin Brooks, Barlow Sturges, Deacon John Beardsley, James Cuddeback and Almon Ruggles, surveyor of the Fire-lands and land agent for the company. One of these, Capt. Wm. Austin, said he often held Commodore O.H. Perry on his knees when a baby. About 1842 the harbor here was dredged to a depth of fourteen feet, a light house built and ship building extensively prosecuted. -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #323 *******************************************