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 324 Today's Topics: #1 Erie Co. History Part 12 [LeaAnn ] #2 Erie Co. History Part 13 (final) [LeaAnn ] ------------------------------ X-Message: #1 Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 03:23:09 -0700 From: LeaAnn Subject: Erie Co. History Part 12 Historical Collections of Ohio Henry Howe LL. D. Erie County KELLEY'S ISLAND is a township of Erie County; lies in the lake, thirteen miles from Sandusky, and contains a little over four square miles. It was originally called Cunningham's Island, from a Frenchman, who came here about 1803. He was an Indian trader, and built a cabin or trading shanty. In 1810 came two other Frenchmen, Poschile and Bebo; all three left the Island in the war period, at which time Gen. Harrison, in command of the "Army of the Northwest," stationed a guard on the west point of the island to watch the movements of the British and Indians on the lake. In 1818 a man named Killam came with his family and one or two men. The steamboat "Walk-in-the-Water," the first built upon the lakes, came out this year, and Killam furnished her with fuel, all red cedar. In 1820, the "Walk-in-the-Water" was wrecked at Point Albino. In 1833 Datus kelley, of Rockport, in connection with his brother, Irad Kelley, of Cleveland, bought the island, with a view of bringing into the market the red cedar with which much of the island was then covered. At this time there were only three or four families, and those squatters, on the island, and only six acres of cleared land. In 1836 Mr. Datus Kelley moved his family to his island home, and remained until his death, in 1866, in his seventy-eighth year. He was a man of great force of character, and careful not to sell land to any settlers except to people of thrift and general good habits; the result of this is apparent in the fine moral status of its present population. The census of 1840 gave it a population of 68; that of 1880, 888. The sales of wood, cedar and stone soon repaid many times the entire purchase, and the tillable land, a strong limestone soil, proved to be of superior quality. The stone trade grew into great proportions. Large quantities of limestone were then quarried for building and other purposes. Some of the most elegant structures of our cities are built with the Kelley Island limestone. Another element came into effect a revolution in the pursuits of the people. About the year 1842, Mr. Datus Kelley noticing that the wild grapes upon the island were remarkably thrifty, brought from his former residence at Rockport the Catawba and Isabella grape vines, and found the soil and climate surprisingly well adapted to the culture of the grape. Mr. Charles carpenter, son-in-law of Mr. Kelley, born in Norwich, Conn., in 1810, planted the first acre of grapes as a field crop, and the demonstration was such that in a few years there were nearly 1,000 acres set to vines, about one third of the entire area of the island. Large profits for a time resulted from the sale of the fruit packed for table use, and as a consequence the price of land advanced several hundred percent. The excess of supply over demand for table use, and also the quality of the crop for that purpose, led to the manufacture of wine, and there were in course of time erected on the island cellars which, including those of the Kelley Island Wine Company, had a capacity of storing half a million gallons of wine. The average crop of grapes by 1880 had grown to 700 tons, all of which was manufactured into wine. Mr. Carpenter, mentioned above, was not only prominent as a horticulturist, but he took a deep interest in the artificial propagation of white-fish, and was put in charge of a branch of the State Fish Hatchery on Kelley's Island. Antiquities-- Kelley's Island was a favorite place of resort of the aborigines, which is shown by the remains of mounds, burial-places, and implements. Here is the famous "Inscription Rock," which archaeologists have regarded as the work of the Eries, or Cat Nation, which was annihilated in a wholesale slaughter by the Iroquois in 1655. The following brief description is from the pen of Mr. Addison Kelley: This Inscription Rock lies on the south shore of Kelley's Island, in Lake Erie, about 60 rods east of the steamboat landing. The rock is 32 feet greatest length, and 21 feet greatest breadth, and 11 feet high above the water in which it sets. It is part of the same stratification as the island, from which it has been separated by lake action. The top presents a smooth and polished surface, like all the limestone of this section of country when the soil is removed, suggesting the idea of glacial action; upon this the inscriptions are cut; the figures and devices are deeply sunk in the rock. Schoolcraft's "Indian Antiquities" says of it: "It is by far the most extensive and well sculptured and best preserved inscription of the antiquarian period ever found in America." It is in the pictographic character of the natives; its leading symbols are readily interpreted. The human figures, the pipe, smoking groups, and other figures denote tribes, negations, crimes, and turmoils, which tell a story of thrilling interest, connected with the occupation of this section by the Eries, of the coming of the Wyandots, of the final triumph of the Iroquois, and flight of the people who have left their name on the lake. In the year 1851, drawings of these inscriptions were made by Col. Eastman, of the United States Army, who was detailed by the government at Washington to examine them on the representation of Gen. Meigs, who had examined them. Copies of the inscriptions were made and submitted to Shingvauk, an Indian learned in Indian pictography, and who had interpreted prior inscriptions submitted to him. We copy a few lines from Schoolcraft's "American Antiquities," page 85 to 87 inclusive: "No.6 is a chief and warrior of distinction; 7, his pipe, he is smoking after a fast; 15-16 are ornaments of leather worn by distinguished warriors and chiefs; No.14, ornaments of feathers; 33, is a symbol for the No.10 and denotes ten days, the length of his fast; 34 is a mark for the number 2 and designates two days, and that he fasted the whole time, except a morsel at sunset. "Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 43 represent different objects relied upon by the chief in the exhibition of his magical and political powers, denoting in him the sources of long life and potent influences; figures 30, 19,41, denote a journey in snow shoes; 31-40, war clubs; 78, a road; 122, serpents who beset his path, etc.etc." These inscriptions were first brought to the knowledge of "the white man," about the year 1833-4, soon after the purchase of the island by Datus and Irad Kelley, being discovered by Charles Olmstead, of Connecticut, while tracing, and studying the glacial grooves. Since then the rock has been visited by thousands of persons, and has become much worn, and some of it is so much obliterated as to prevent a full photograph being taken of it, as it was when first discovered. Prior to photographing the shown view of Inscription Rock Mr. Bishop and Mr. Addison Kelley, the latter shown on its summit, passed half a day in going over the partly obliterated lines in red chalk because red photographs black. The most celebrated locality perhaps in the world to show the marks of the receding glaciers is in this island region, and especially are they strong on Kelley's Island, as described on the third page of the article in this work, "Glacial Man in Ohio." Col. Chas Whittlesey, in a paper read before the "American Association for the Advancement of Science," August, 1878, entitled "Ancient Glacial Action, Kelley's Island, Lake Erie," says: "These islands originally formed a part of the main land on the south and of the low coast to the west. Probably all of the lake west of Point Pellee, in the pre-glacial period, was more land than water. Instead of a lake with islands, it must have been a country with lakes, rivers, and swamps." Some of the furrows on this island worn by the ice are two feet deep. In this region whenever the rocks are laid bare the evidences of ice action are very marked. In Sandusky City many of the cellar bottoms show polished, grooved and striated surfaces. ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 03:56:38 -0700 From: LeaAnn Subject: Erie Co. History Part 13 (final) Historical Collections of Ohio Henry Howe LL.D. Erie County Ohio State Fish Hatchery-- On the eastern margin of Sandusky, by the waterside, in a small one-story frame building of two rooms, is located the Ohio State Fish Hatchery. Small and unpretentious as the quarters are, nevertheless a work of great importance goes on within their limits, and it is to be hoped that our State government will take measures for the greater development of this useful institution. With great increase in the needs of its people, a wise government makes provision for keeping its food supplies unimpoverished. The Ohio State Fish Hatchery was founded some twelve years ago at Toledo. Some years later the Sandusky branch was started, and then, owing to a cutting down of funds, that at Toledo was closed. The establishment at Sandusky is under the charge of Superintendent Henry Douglass, assisted by George W. Littleton and six or seven extra assistants engaged during the hatching seasons. But wo kinds of fish have as yet been hatched, pickerel and white-fish; of these 65,000,000 pickerel and 100,000,000 white fish were hatched during the past season, 1887-1888. About April 1st the pickerel eggs are taken and about October 1st the white fish eggs. These are procured from fish caught in nets on Lake Erie. From the females (which can be distinguished by their unusual size) the eggs are squeezed in three gallon pans (eggs from three females to each pan). Next six male fish are picked out and the impregnating fluid squeezed from them into the pan. Males and females are then thrown back into the lake, and the pans containing the impregnated eggs are taken to the hatchery. In the larger of the two rooms of the hatchery are ranged on each side and in the center a series of wooden troughs, and below each trough a row of glass jars about two feet high and six or seven inches in diameter. Above each jar is a wooden faucet connected by a rubber hose a few inches long to a thick glass tube in the center of the jar and of the same length as the jar. Four small "feet" at the bottom of the tube permit the water to flow from it up through the jar to its top where it is discharged into another, thence through other jars and so on. The impregnated eggs are placed in these jars and the water turned on. The water is lake water supplied from the city water works. It is kept cold, sometimes freezing, as the eggs and the fish have to be kept cold until placed in the streams. After the eggs are placed in the jars they must be kept constantly moving, and are watched night and day, that they may not adhere to each other or the sides of the jars as soon as an egg spoils (which is discovered by its failure to change color) it must be removed; this is done with a feather. At the first the eggs have a kind of cream color, from which they change in a month to a much darker color, then in six weeks back to their original hue, and alternate colors in that manner until hatched, which is about two to four weeks for pickerel and five months for white fish. When hatched the pickerel are about one quarter of an inch long and the white fish is half an inch. Each fish is found to have a food sack containing a viscid colorless substance which sustains its life from three to four weeks, but what they live on after that is unknown. In about a year they grow to weigh a pound and increase in weight each succeeding year, until the pickerel attains a weight of fifteen to eighteen pounds and the white fish a weight of twenty pounds. The freshly hatched fish are given away to anyone making application for them, the only requirement being that they be placed in some inland stream or lake. They are put up in cans similar to milk cans and are distributed according to order by the agents of the hatchery who travel through all parts of the State. Pickerel only are placed in streams as the white fish will not live in streams, but large numbers of the young white fish have been placed in Lake Erie, resulting in an apparent increase in the supply. After years of effort it has been found impossible to hatch bass or perch. The difficulty lies in obtaining the impregnating fluid from the males, who at the season of impregnation go into deep water and defy all efforts to capture them. Experiments have been made by keeping them in captivity, but without avail. The only way that lakes can be stocked with bass is to catch the young fish with nets and transport them to where they are wanted. This is often done. A year ago a lot of herring were hatched and placed in some lakes east of Cleveland, and if they thrive the hatching of herring will be made one of the features of the hatchery. Lake Erie abounds with them. They are a small fish, weighing but a pound when full grown, but are very good eating. Some experiments in the propagation of cat-fish are also to be undertaken shortly. -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #324 *******************************************