OTTAWA COUNTY OHIO - HISTORY:  County History Part 3 (published 1898)
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HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF OHIO By Henry Howe, LL.D., 1898

                           OTTAWA COUNTY PART 3

                             TRAVELING NOTES
                           A VISIT TO GIBRALTAR

        Gibraltar is a very interesting islet. An indentation in Put-in-Bay
Island forms Put-in-Bay harbor. Gibraltar lies within the mouth of the
indentation and only about a furlong from either shore. It contains eight
acres and rises, a forest-clad rock, forty-five feet above the lake. It
bears forty-eight different kinds of trees. When the autumnal frosts cover
the leaves it rounds up from the water as a huge bower of beauty, and
sometimes when the air is calm the lake repeats the bower.
        In the war of 1812 the island was fortified. Perry's fleet sailed
out from here six miles to a point three miles north of Rattlesnake Island
and there met the enemy.
        AN ISLAND CASTLE. -The island is owned by Jay Cooke, and ever since
the war era it has been his summer home. In 1864 and 1865 he built upon it
his spacious castellated residence. Part of the materials for it were for a
time in possession of the Southern Confederacy, the doors and
window-casings. These were on board the "Island Queen" when she was
captured by Beall, "The Pirate of Lake Erie." Mr. Cooke was not on board
and so escaped molestation. But could they have secured and held him and
used his great financial talents in their cause, it might not have been
among the great variety of things "in the deep bosom of the ocean buried."
        Upon the island Mr. Cooke has erected a monument to the memory of
Commodore Perry with a suitable inscription and near it stands mounted
cannon, trophies of the victory. A lookout tower one hundred and thirty
feet above the water gives a magnificent outlook. Some twenty beautiful
islands and islets come under the eye from its summit, and there are
largely productive in grapes, peaches, pears, quinces, apples and other fruits.
        TEMPERING EFFECT OF WATER. -It was on the 20th of October that by
invitation I arrived at Gibraltar to pass a day with Mr. Cooke, and at even
that late season the temperature of the lake air was so kindly that lima
beans were still plucked for the table on Put-in-Bay Island, also
cantaloupes and water melons; a few eatable peaches were lingering upon the
trees, which Mr. Cooke gathered for my use when he took me over there on
the succeeding morning. Flowers were also growing in the open air, as
roses, heliotropes, pansies, mignonettes, etc., and might be for a month to
come while thirty miles south on the mainland they had long been over taken
by frost; such was the tempering effect of surrounding water on the
atmosphere of the island.
        On the island are about eight hundred acres in grapes alone, the
rest of the island mainly in other fruit. The yearly value from fruit and
fishing for the people amounts to about a quarter of a million dollars. The
population is about eight hundred. Peaches do remarkably well and also on
the Peninsula. The making of fruit baskets is an important industry of this
region. Peck baskets, wholesale, at about thirty cents, and half-bushel
baskets at forty-two cents a dozen. When winter shuts down here it
sometimes does it with so much vim that one can walk upon the ice from the
Sandusky shore to that of Canada.
        AN ENTERPRISING POLAR BEAR. -The winter of 1813 was especially
severe; not a square yard of open water that anybody knew of between the
islands and the North Pole. Whereupon, as the story goes, a white polar
bear of enterprising spirit started South on an exploring tour until he
reached the Peninsula, opposite Sandusky, when he was discovered by our
kind, who treated him inhospitably, set upon him and carried off his fur
coat. Poor bear!
        OWNING AN ISLAND. -There is something romantic in that idea of
having an island all to one's self, as Mr. Cooke has in Gibraltar.
Ex-President Hayes felt it years ago when his children were young, for he
bought, a mile or so off the Peninsula, a small island as a recreation
ground for them, where they could camp out and go a-sailing and a-fishing.
It is a very small affair, so small one might some day take a fancy to pick
it up, slip it in his vest pocket as he would his watch and walk off with
it. It has a tiny name -Mouse Island -and it contains three acres.
        When the war closed Mr. Cooke had his house finished. Being a
Christian man he felt it was the Lord's work, thinking all the time of the
text. "Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it."
So every summer for a term of ten years he was wont in gratitude to invite
the Lord's ministers to enjoy it with him, generally picking out poor men
with but lean salaries.
        A CHRISTIAN PLAN. -His plan was to invite ten at a time, and two of
a kind -two Methodists, two Presbyterians, two Episcopalians, two
Lutherans, etc., whom he would keep two weeks and then they would depart
for a second ten. When each departed he passed over checks to make good
their travelling expenses to and fro. During their stay with him there was
perfect concord, notwithstanding diverse theological beliefs. Of course, he
took his guests sailing and fishing and their mutual enjoyment was huge.
And sometimes when they sat down to the social meal there would lie on the
platter for their regaling a magnificent white fish or bass that only an
hour or two before had been sporting in the water not one hundred yards
away from the dining-table.
        THE LOVER'S CAVE. -This rock of Gibraltar has its curiosities. The
formation being limestone and one side a perpendicular bluff, it has under
it a cave into which a boat can go; it is called "Lover's Cave. Another is
the "Needle's Eye," an arched passage-way formed by an overhanging rock and
another coming up from the bottom of the lake, coming up from the he bottom
of the lake. One spot on the overhanging bluff is called "Perry's Lookout,"
where Perry was wont to station a sentinel to watch for the British fleet,
and early one morning he discovered it near the Canada shore, whereupon he
hoisted his anchors, sailed out of the bay and met them, much to their sorrow.
        PAINFUL SUSPENSE. -While the battle was in progress the sound of
the guns was heard at Cleveland, about sixty miles away in a direct line
over the water. The few settlers there were expecting the battle and
listened with intense interest. Finally the sounds ceased. They waited for
a renewal. None came; the lull was painful. Then they knew the battle was
over; but the result, ah! that was the point. One old fellow who had been
lying flat with his ear to the ground soon settled that point. Springing up
he clapped his hands and shouted. "Thank God! they are whipped! they are
whipped."
        "How do you know?" the others exclaimed.
        "Heard the big guns last!"
        Perry's guns were the heaviest.
        POWER OF IMPRESSIBILITY. -I had not met Mr. Cooke until this visit,
and then I felt as though I had always known him; that, indeed, he was a
very old friend. There are some characters that have that power of friendly
impressibility and don't know it, and ought not to be blamed for having it.
My philosophy of the matter is that it is the spirit of humanity and
geniality that has got them in its full possession, and such would be
miserable if they couldn't do good to everybody and everything around them,
and this shows in every act, every word that falls from their lips and
every expression of countenance. How those old divines must have enjoyed
his princely hospitality and winning, heartful ways.
        Mr. Cooke has a fine personelle. He is of the blonde type, half an
inch less than six feet in stature and turns the scale at one hundred and
ninety pounds. He is springy, alert in his movements and his mind acts with
alike alertness. He has done a great work since that old Indian chief
Ogontz carried him a small boy on his shoulders on the streets of Sandusky.
Just glance at it.
        A REMARKABLE CAREER. -In the spring of 1839, when eighteen years
old, he went East to seek his fortune; entered as a boy the banking-house
of E.W. Clarke & Co., Philadelphia, the largest domestic exchange and
banking-house in the country. In a few months he was head-clerk; in his
twentieth year had power of attorney to sign checks for the firm and at
twenty-one was taken in as partner.
        And when the war ensued he was the financial agent of the
Government; and his house of Jay Cooke & Co., of Philadelphia, with
branches in Washington, New York and London, did the greatest banking
business the world has known. In the year 1865 it amounted to nearly three
thousand millions of dollars. In placing the United States bonds he spent
not less than a million of dollars in advertising and publications and took
all risks. Being of strong religious convictions he feels as though he had
been an instrument in the hands of Providence to provide the funds for
putting down the Rebellion. And until there is revealed the inner financial
history of that stupendous era, the nation will never know how greatly its
salvation rested upon the financial genius, and patriotism of Jay Cooke.
But he knows, and that is for him the best part of it.

        -continued in part 4




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