OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List Issue 33 ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES(tm) NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgenwebarchives.org ************************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 05 : Issue 33 Today's Topics: #1 Fw: Tid Bits - part 22 ["Ohio Archives EV1" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <082a01c5364b$dac04d10$0300a8c0@margaret> Subject: Fw: Tid Bits - part 22 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: "Darlene & Kathi kelley" To: Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005 5:51 PM Subject: Tid Bits - part 22 Contributed for us in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley March 25, 2005 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits --part 22 >From Notes collected by S. Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Real Settlers of New Connecticut Although the French ( both Protestant and Roman Catholic ), the Spanish, the Dutch, the Quaker, and the English ( Cavalier and Puritan ) colonized the new world, we are apt to think of the early inhabitant as the Massachusetts Puritan alone. Somehow the Puritan, especially the Pilgram, with his plain, dark clothes, his high hat and his determined countenance, impresses itself deeply upon our sub-consciousness. Just so do we give all the credit of the successful settling of the Western Reserve to the Connecticut emigrants, which is entirely incorrect. There were two ways to enter New Connecticut, namely, through New York State to Buffalo and along Lake Erie, or through Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, up the rivers. From the state of Pennsylvania came the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Scotch-Irish; these, with the New Yorker, joined the Connecticut Yankee in making of the new state of Ohio. Some of the truest and most helpful citizens were the Scotch-Irish; some of the most frugel and industrious were the Pennsylvania Dutch. The Yankee considered himself superior to his neighbors, who said " du bish " or had a brogue. His education as a rule was better, his family longer established in these United States, and he believed himself responsible for the development of the country. On the other hand, the early Dutch Pennsylvanian saw faults in his Yankee neighbor, and commented upon the same. The early Dutch housewife would say to her neighbor, when inviting her to stay to a meal. " It's not much we have, but anything is better than the weak tea and crackers of the Yankees." The " Dutchman " were frugal, neat, industrious, but liked good living. Early settlers in Pennsylvania uniformly testify to the excellant cooking of the Pennsylvania Dutch women. A Trumbull county man at the age of fifty, tells of the day when he was a young man, he taught school in western Pennsylvania, and remembers with pleasure, when he boarded around. A prominent citizen of Warren, whose grandparents were Pennsylvania Dutch, and whose mother and wife were both excellent housekeepers, gives credit to both for being successes as homemakers, but usually ends with " but no one ever quite came up to grandmother's cooking." It was the Scotch-Irish who made the mirth for the pioneers, particularly at " frolic times," as house-raisings, log-rollings, and the like occassions were called. They cared less for money than did the Yankee or the German, and did not leave land fortunes to their descendants. They did, however, one thing for which they are never given credit. They, and not the men from the state of Blue Laws, were first in establishing and maintaining churches. Lest we my be tossing our heads in pride, we who trace back to our Connecticut forefather, let us see what others thought and think of us. W.H. Hunter, of Chillicothe, in an address at Philadelphia, on " Influence of Pennsylvania on Ohio, " says: " The claims made for the Puritan settlement at Marietta gave us an example of Puritan audicity; the New England settlements on the Western Reserve give us examples of Yankee ingenuity. In Connecticut he made nutmegs of wood; in Ohio he makes maple molasses of glucose and hickory bark. In New England the Puritan bored the Quaker tongue with red-hot poker; in Ohio he dearly loves to roast Democrats. The Reserve was the home of crankisms. Joseph Smith started the Morman church in Lake county. And there were others." The Connecticut pioneer impressed himself on the Western Reserve history because he was usually a college man. He became a surveyor, the lawyer, the judge, the legislator, the governor, because he was mentally equiped for such positions. Almost every leading jurist of that day was a Yale graduate. It is known that for many years before the organization of the Connecticut Land Company, as early as 1755, people have traveled from Penneylvania to Salt Springs, between Niles and Warren, for the purpose of making salt. Long vats and kettles showing much wear and little care were early found by traders and explorers. Men who were identified with the early times have written of seeing travelers with kettles thrown over the back of a horse on their way to the springs. Salt was expensive, costing, according to some authorities, six dollars a bushel; others, sixteen dollars a barrel. The water there was brackish and cost of making too expensive to be profitable. Some of the salt spring kettles later found in a spot near Braceville, where the Indians used them for making maple sugar, and within the later years they still existed. So far as we are concerned, with the exception of the most needed salt, nothing good ever came out of the Salt Sprng region. The first man who owned te tract --- Judge Parsons -- was drowned and men stationed in one of the cabins to watch the goods belonging to a Beaver firm was killed. The white men who constructed cabins there were in constant fear of the Indians, and were not financially repaid for their trouble. " The Pennsylvanians who had recourse to it during the Revolution erected cabins there. In 1785 Colonel Brodhead, commanding troops at Fort Pitt, had orders to dispossess them, and did so. The Indians soon burned the cabins they had erected." Here occurred the first murder on the Reserve, and here, time and time again, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, people have had hope of making fotunes from the mineral water, only to give up in despair later. In 1906/07 the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad acquired the land, and now, where once men, white and red, boiled water into salt, while they drank whiskey and fought; where women and children suffered from fear of the red man; where men invested time and money to no purpose, runs a great trunk line, and men and women sleep and eat as they pass over that spot where so much unhappiness existed, and never think of Indians or murder or even salt, for the latter served in the diner, is served without cost. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ First Land Purchases General Samuel H. Parsons, of Connecticut, whose father was a distinguished clergyman, and whose mother ( a descendant of Henry Wocott ) was a strong character, was the first lawyer, and the first purchaser of land on the Western Reserve. He was an early friend of John Adams, a Yale graduate, took an active interest in colonial politics, and became on of the boldest of American generals. Old records in the hands of the family attribute to him the planning of the siege of Ticonderoga, which was the first hostile move in the war of the Revolution. Congress, in 1785, appointed him as one of the commissioners to treat with the Indians for cessions of land. Cincinnati stands on one of the portions ceded. Two years later he was appointed judge for the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio river, and in 1789 became chief justice of the Northwest Territory. Having traveled through this country, he was familiar with the land, and finally bought from the commissioners appointed by the Connecticut legislature to sell land, a tract situated in the townships now known as Lordstown, Weathersfield, Jackson, and Austintown. The deed to this twenty-five thousand acres is on record in the Trumbull county courthouse, and all records and maps agree as to its bounderies. He chose this spot, undoubtedly, because the Indians and traders had cleared land round about, because the springs found there contained brackish water from which he hoped later to manufature salt, and because Pittsburgh was comparatively near at hand and stores could be gotten at Beaver and other points on the river. He, however, never occupied this purchase. He was drowned, as above stated, in the Beaver river, probably at the falls, when returning east. Little or no money had actually been paid down for the land, but his heirs claimed it nevertheless. From Webb's manuscript we learn: " And although the Connectict Land Company ran their township and range line regardless of this claim, and although they in the proceedings at the time called it only a ' pretend claim,' yet, in making partition of their lands, they reserved land enough in the townships Nos 2 and 3, in the third and fourth range, to satisfy this claim, which they never aparted and which they ultimately abandoned to the heirs and assigns of Gerneral Parsons." +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ First Land Purchaser The rules and regualtions of the Connecticut Land Company are of great interest. Every possibility of misunderstanding is provided for, minor details are mentioned, and the document shows the workmanship of the careful, conservative New England mind. The directors of the company were Oliver Phelps, Henry Champion, Roger Newberry, and Samuel Mathews, Jr. Following isa list of the surveying party of 1796: General Moses Cleaveland, Superintenant Augustus Porter, Principal Surveyor, and Deputy Superintendant. Seth Pease, Astronomer and Surveyor. Amos Spafford, John Milton Holley, Richard M. Stoddard and Moses Warren, Surveyors. Joshua Stow, Commissary. Theodore Shepard, Physician. Employees of the Company: Joseph Tinker, Daniel Shulay. Boatman. Joseph McIntyre. George Proudfoot. Francis Gray. Samuel Forbes. Amos Sawtel. Stephen Benton. Amos Barber. Samuel Hungerford. William B. Hall. Samuel Davenport. Asa Mason. Amzi Atwater. Michael Coffin. Elisha Ayers. Thomas Harris. Norman Wilcox. Timothy Dunham. George Gooding. Shadrach Benham. Samuel Agnew. Wareham Shepard. David Beard. John Briant. Titus V. Munson. Joseph Landon. Charles Parker. Ezekiel Morly. Nathaniel Doan. Luke Hanchet. James Halket. James Hamiton. Olney F. Rice. John Lock. Samuel Barnes. Stephen Burbank. We are told in several original manuscripts that this party consisted of fifty, but as the above numbers only forty-six, Gun, who was to have charge of the stores at Conneaut; Stiles, who was to have like position at Cleaveland; Chapman and Perry, who were to furnish fresh meat and trade with the Indians, must have made up the number. In some of the original records the full list of men are given with these words, " and two females." So unused were makers of books and keepers of records to giving a woman's name, unless she were queen or sorceress, that this seemed nothing unusual. These " two females," who made the first real homes on the Reserve, were Ann, the wife of Elija Gun, and Tabiatha Currie, the wife of Job Stiles. Not only did they keep house, one at Conneaut and the other at Cleaveland, but they kept them so well that the surveyors took themselves there upon the slightest pretext. They also had an oversight and care of the company. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Continued in part 23. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 18:47:36 -0500 From: "Ohio Archives EV1" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <083001c5364c$04534e70$0300a8c0@margaret> Subject: Fw: Tid Bits - part 23 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: "Darlene & Kathi kelley" To: Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 5:58 PM Subject: Tid Bits - part 23 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley March 26, 2005. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Ohio And Then They Went West Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley Tid Bits - part 23 from notes of S. Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Part 23. Instructions to Cleaveland. Here are the instructions of the directors to their agent: To Moses Cleaveland, Esq., of the County of Windham, and State of Connecticut, one of the Directors of the Connecicut Land Company, Greeting; We, the Board of Directors, of said Connecticut Land Company, having appointed you to go on to said land, as Superintendent over the agents and men, sent on to survey and make locations on said land, to make, and enter into friendly negotiations with the natives who are on said land, or contiguous thereto, and may have any pretended claim to the same, and secure such friendly intercourse amongst them as will establish peace, quiet, and safety to the survey and settlement of said lands, not ceded by the natives under the authority of the United States. You are hereby, for the foregoing purposes, fully authorized and empowered to act, and transact all the above business in as full and ample a manner as we oursleves could do, to make contracts in the foregoing matters in our behalf and stead; and make such drafts on our Treasury, as may be necessary to accomplish the foregoing object of your appointment. And all agents and men by us employed, and sent on survey and settle said land, to be obedient to your orders and directions. And you are to be accountable for all monies by you received, conforming your conduct to such orders and directions as we may, from time to time, give you, and to do and act in all matters, according to your best skill and judgement, which may tend to the best interest, prosperity, and success of said Connecticut Land Company. Having more particularly for your guide the Articles of Association entered into and signed by the individuals of said Company. Pittsburgh and Canandaigua were the outlying posts for travelers to the Western Reserve. The Connecticut Land Company instructed the surveying party to gather at Canandaigua and proceed. Several of the journals of these young surveyers are in the passession of the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the entries in some of them which have never been published are curious. Mr. Seth Pease says under several dates in close succession: " I began my journey, Monday May 9, 1796. Fare from Suffeld to Hartford, six shillings; expenses four shillings six pence. ****** At breakfast, expense two shillings. Fare on my chest from Hartford to Middletown, one shilling, six pence." In telling about his trip to New York, he says; " Passage and liquor 4 dollars and three quarters." When he arrived in New York we find the following entry; " Ticket for play 75 cents; Liquor 14 cents; Show of elephants, 50 cents; shaving and combing, 13 cents. " Apparently Mr. Pease was seeing New York. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Usual Route to The Reserve And diobedience of Mr. Stow. It will probably pay the reader to take a map and follow their route from Connecticut to Schenectady, up the Mohawk river into Oneida lake, on to the Oswego river, into Ontario lake, alng the southern shore of this lake to Canandaigua, and then to Burffalo, from there touching at least once at Presque Isle ( Erie ), on past the Pennsylvania line. They sailed and walked the shore. Sometimes part of them turned back to help bring up those delayed, or went ahead of the party to counsel with military officers or to make necessary preparations for the party. It was a tedious trip. The four batteaux filled with provisions, baggage and men were heavy, and most of the men were unused to river boating. One of them records that pulling up the Mohawk was as hard work as he ever did in his life. It was a relief when they began going down the Oswego and came to Fort Stanwix ( Rome, New York ). Here Mr. Joshua Stow procured the necessary papers to allow the party to pass Fort Oswego, which was in the hands of the British. At this very time an agreement had been reached which provided that Americans could have access to the Lakes. The party therefore rapidly proceeded only to find they had been too sanguine ( optimistic ). The officers in charge of the fort had no new orders from Fort Niagrara; the old orders allowed no Americans to pass. The party, somewhat disappointed, put into a little bay in the river. The land was low, the soldiers at the fort where many of them were ill and dying, and the surveyers, ready and anxious for work in the far west, were not pleased at the thought of lying idly in this unwholesome spot until a messenger could go to Niagara and return. The directors of the Land Company had anticipated this trouble, as said above, and instructed Mr. Stow, who was a commissary, not to pass the fort if there was opposition. The situation was trying to Mr. Stow. Since he disobeyed orders and brought the party through successfully, we consider him an intelligent, faithful employee. Had the winds been a little stronger, the waves a little higher, conditions a little less favorable, so that the boats and the passengers had been lost, he would always have been referred as to a guilty, incompetent hireling. The officers of the fort of Oswego knew that the party arrived in four boats; consequently, when Mr. Stow, with one boat, went by the fort, he was not disturbed. These officers did not observe he carried provisions, they only thought he was going to Fort Niagara to obtain permission for the party to move on. The guard not being on the outlook, the three other boats passed the fort under the protection of night. Thus the party safely reached Lake Ontario. They had been hindered and bothered in many ways, but now they believed their troubles to be over. However, as is often the case when people are sanguine, the worst they were to see was at hand. A storm came up quickly and violently, throwing the three boats into Sodus Bay, where one of them was utterly disabled and where the whole party, almost miraculously, escaped drowning. One can imagine the anxiety of Mr. Stow, who had gone on to Irondequoit ( the port for Rochester ) when he learned that the three boats following him had been lost and nothing saved but an oar and a gun, thrown on shore at Sodus Bay. Either he or Augustus Porter ( accounts disagree ) with some men, turned about from Irondequoit to go to Sodus, hoping to learn how the shipwreck occurred. They were overjoyed to meet Captain Beard, who told them that instead of all being lost except the oar and gun, the oar and gun were the only thing which really were lost. One of the boats, however, which was useless, was abandoned, and the party proceeded on its way to Irondequoit, Canandiagua and the new home. The Indians at Buffalo were expecting them, and like all traders they were wondering what they dare demand; that is, how much they could get for their right to land. It's a wise man who offers neither too much nor too little. A man who proceeded the party with horses was forced to pay three dollars for pasture. Since the grass was neither cared for nor used by anybody, this was exorbitant. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Bargaining with the Indians It exasperates the reader of today to watch the slow movement of this party of surveyers. When they arrived at Buffalo, some of them went to Fort Niagara, possibly on business; some took a look at the Falls, while Holly, under the date of June 18th, says; " Porter and myself went on the Creek ( Buffalo ) in a bark canoe a fishing and caught only three little ones." How could people with such uncertainty ahead of them stop to angle ? Finally, the council with the red man was had, and a picturesque scene it was. On the shore of the lake, under the starry June sky, the white men, forerunners of the Western Reserve citizens, with joy in their faces and hope in their hearts, sat around the blazing fire prepared by the red men. Speeches were made on both sides, diplomatic messages exchanged, and while part of the Indians performed a swinging dance, the rest grunted an accompaniment from their sitting position on the ground. Negotiations were not completed then --- not at all; it was too soon. The Indian was " long on time " and short on whiskey. They must get drunk, of course. What was the good of a treaty without a pow-wow? What was good of the white man except for his whiskey ? So pow-wow and whiskey it was, fortunately with no bad results. On June 23rd, " after much talking on part of the Indians, Cleaveland offered Capt. Brant 500 pounds New York currency, which equals $1,000, provided he would peacefully relinquish his title to the western land. This sum was not large enough to please the captain, but after much parley he finally agreed to it, provided Cleaveland would use his influence with the United States and obtain from the government the sum of $500 annually for his tribe. In case he could not accomplish this he was to promise that the Land Company would pay an additional $1,500 in cash." Whether this agreement was kept, and whether either the government or company paid this sum is not known to the author, but as white men were treating with Indians, we presume this money is the last they saw. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Title Bought of the Red Man. Cleaveland then gave two beef cattle and 100 gallons of whiskey to satisfy the eastern Indians, and a feast followed. The western Indians were also given provisions to help them home and all had been entertained during the council. It is greatly to the credit of the Connecticut Land Company, and a source of much satisfaction to the residents of the Western Reserve today that the title to the land was not stolen, but was bought and paid for, even if the price was low; further, that possession of the new country was given and taken under the best feeling and without one drop of bloodshed. To be sure, our forefathers must have had a little larger supply of whiskey than the sentiment of today would alow them, when we remember they gave away hundred gallons and had plenty for all summer. History must have studied from its own time. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Early Drunkeness Whiskey was plentiful during the early days of the colonization as was food. To be sure, it was not our adulterated stuff of today, but it was whiskey, and it did what alcohol always has done and always will do to men. Its stimulating qualities for a time relieved the lonesomeness and fatique, but depression following surely more than overbalanced the good. All of the misunderstandings among travelers and early settlers and Indians were caused more or less by whiskey. The women in the early settlements abhorred it. They feared to have their husbands take it, lest trouble should follow. Anxiously these women in their own cabins, with wolves howling nearby outside, and babies huddled close within, awaited the coming of the husband who had been to an adjoining clearing, not knowing what animal or savage might have made way with him because of his drunkeness. These women saw their neighbors succeed and become prosperous because of self-control, while they remained poor because of the " fruit of the corn." Many and many over-worked wife who had looked forward to a log-rolling for weeks went home from the same with weeping eyes and heavy heart, her husband too drunk to guide the horse or act as her protector. Some people believe that there wa not as much drunkeness than as now, and will bring proof to bare upon it. This is not the place to discuss the temperance question, but, when we know that in range one, number one, Poland, there were eighteen stills; that in many settlements ministers were paid in whiskey, we can scacely believe the drunkenness of today is greater. Then, as now, women are temperate; then as now, they suffered from drunkenness and its consequences; then, as now, they persuaded and begged their very own t desist; then, as now, they wept and prayed, and then, as now, a few heeded, while more were not. One woman of this section whose husband took much at stated intervals, when he came home in that condition, obliged him to sit in a straightback chair till he was sober. If he started to move, she raised a stick of wood as if to strike him, when he immediately resumed his seat. He finally declared there was no use in drinking if one had to sit still until sober, and he reformed. As a rule, however, the stick, in a real or metaphorical sense, was, and is, in the hand of man. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ First Independence Day At last the surveyors had reached their destination. Even though they were adults, they had said good-bye to their home friends with thick throats and heavy hearts. They had paddled slowly the New York rivers, had outwitted the British officers, had suffered shipwreck, had endured the discomforts of long, slow travel, had successfully treated with Indians, and now, in the afternoon of a summer day, they had come upon the " promised land." The blue waters of the lake lapped the shore, the creek sliggishly sought its bay, the great forest trees were heavy with bright green leaves, the grass was thick and soft, the sky was blue, and, the lowering sun bathed the landscape with delicate reds and yellows. It was the Fourth of July, Independence Day, for which their fathers, twenty years before, had fought, and for which they themselves held holy reverence. They had double reason to rejoice, and they shouted, sang, fired guns across the water, adding an additional salute for the new territory. They drank water from the creek and whiskey from the jug; they named the spot Fort Independence, and drank toasts to the president of the United States, the state of Connecticut, the Connecticut Land Company, the Fort of Independence, and " the fifty sons and daughters who have entered it this day." When the camp fires had died down, and the stars were thick and bright, they went to sleep in the new land which was shortly to be broken up into thirteen counties ( Astabula, Geauga, Cuyahoga, Lake, Trumbull, Mahoning, Portage, Summit, part of Medina, part of Ashland, Erie, Huron, and Lorain.) If anyone dreamed that night that in one hundred and fifteen years these thirteen counties would have almost as much influence in the world as the thirteen original colonies had at the time; that most of the huge forests would be subplanted by cultivated fields and prosperous towns; that Indian paths would be macadam roads; that over tiny wires one could talk to any part of this New Country as easily as they could talk to each other that night on the lake shore; that school houses and churches would be thick throughout that region; and that both would be free; that over the very spot where they lay sleeping, powerful engines would carry sleeping passengers at the rate of sixty miles an hour; that vehicles without horses would spin along the lake front from Buffalo creek to the Cuyahoga in less time than it took them to put their camp in order; that mountains of ore would lie in the lake ships a few miles from them; that no man wilder then they would be east of the Mississippi; that the widest animals would be the youthful bull or the aged house-dog; and that in the nearby valleys would be some of the most wonderful industrial plants in all the world, and that hundreds of men would have sufficient money to buy and pay the whole Western Reserve without inconvenience; that on this territory would stand the sixth largest city in the United States; that slavery would not exist; that women would have a voice in making the school laws, and that men would float or fly through the air above their heads in machines made for flying, -- if anyone of the party had dreamed any of these things, and related them in the morning, he would have been declared untruthful or as suffering too much from taken from the gurgling jug. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tid Bits to be continued in part 24. -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V05 Issue #33 ******************************************