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Historical Collections of Ohio

By Henry Howe

Vol. I

©1888

 

CUYAHOGA COUNTY—Continued

 

 

 

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model jail, in which prisoners could be held secure and not herded together. This much accomplished, Mr. PERKINS next turned his attention to the infirmary system of the State, and made visits to many places, and learned much that showed the need of some direct and practical reform. This he suggested in a plan somewhat similar to the one mentioned above, modified to the needs of the class for which it was intended.

 

One thing Mr. PERKINS learned in these investigations, and that he strongly insisted upon in all his official relations and personal discussions with executive officials, and that was that the less restraint placed upon the insane and the more air and outdoor work given them, the better for their physical health and chances of recovery. His infirmary plan has become a model for the country, and the best buildings erected anywhere have been in accordance with its specifications. Always a believer in the theory that crime or want should be prevented where possible, he was ever a strong and earnest friend to any measure suggested in aid of the children. His next step was the making of a plan for a Children’s Home, to which he gave the greatest care and attention, and which expert testimony and practical experience have united in showing to be as nearly perfect as anything of the kind can be.

 

In all these labors, and in the many other things he was enabled to do through his connection with this Board, Mr. PERKINS kept himself in the background, and gave the Board and not himself the credit of his thought and labor, while the expenses of his various missions never became a charge upon the State fund, but were met by him personally. His official associates appreciated his value to the causes they all held so dear, and in a fitting memorial to his honor declared that “Traces of his long and valuable service are seen in the annual reports of the Board; and the plans and estimates for jails and infirmaries therein published, and which we regard as the best in the world, are mainly his work, and were gotten up entirely at his expense.”

 

Another of Cleveland’s philanthropic characters was MRS. REBECCA ELLIOTT CROMWELL ROUSE, so well known for her self-sacrificing devotion to the soldiers of the North during the civil war. She was born in Salem, Mass., October 30, 1799. Her childhood was spent in affluence, her education liberal, and her mind cultured by years of travel in many lands. At the age of eighteen she married Benjamin ROUSE; in 1825 removed to New York city, and five years later, with her husband, left her Eastern home to engage in missionary work on the Western Reserve.

 

Mrs. ROUSE is called “the mother of the Baptist churches and founder of the Woman’s Christian work in Cleveland.” She was the organizing spirit and the president of the Martha WASHINGTON Society of 1842, the outgrowth of which was the Protestant Orphan Asylum, the oldest of the Protestant benevolent institutions of Cleveland, of which Mrs. ROUSE was for years the managing director.

 

Many there are “who shall rise up and call her blessed.” Not a few of these are the Ohio boys in blue, during the war of the rebellion. They never will forget the continued self-sacrificing labor this great-hearted woman gave for five years, when she was instrumental in collecting and distributing over $2,000,000 worth of hospital supplies for the gallant sick and woulded lying in military hospitals. The call to arms was sounded on the 15^th of April, 1861. Five days later the “Soldiers’ Aid Society of Cleveland, Ohio,” was formed, and it has the honor, the great and lasting honor, of being the first society of women that met and organized for the noble work of bearing a people’s love to the people’s army. As president of this famous society, Mrs. ROUSE became widely known and much beloved. Fragile and delicate in person, it was astonishing the amount of labor she performed. To her wise administration of its affairs was largely due the success of an enterprise which achieved a national reputation.

 

Mrs. ROUSE has recently passed away after a life nobly spent in ameliorating human woe. Self-sacrifice brought her peace and happiness, although the labor was great and the body and mind oft weary.

 

 

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office in Athens. In 1831 he was editor and proprietor of a Democratic paper at Marietta–the Gazette; in 1833, with his brother Charles, he purchased and published the Lancaster Eagle, which gained great influence as a Democratic organ. In 1839 he was elected State auditor.

 

“He entered upon the duties of his office at a time when the whole country still felt the effects of the panic of 1837, and when the State of Ohio was peculiarly burdened with liabilities for which there appeared to be no adequate relief. Mr. BROUGH devoted himself to reconstructing the whole financial system of Ohio, and retired from office, in 1846, with a high reputation as a public officer. In partnership with his brother Charles he undertook the management of the Cincinnati Enquirer, which was soon one of the most powerful Democratic journals in the West. At the same time he opened a law office in Cincinnati. Personally Mr. BROUGH took an active part in politics, and became the most popular Democratic orator in the State. He retired from active political life in 1848, and in 1853 was elected president of the Madison and Indianapolis railway, then one of the great lines of the West. He removed his residence to Cleveland, and when the civil war began, in 1861, he was urged to become a candidate of the Republican Union party for governor. This honor he declined, although his position as a “war-Democrat” was always distinctly understood. The canvass of 1863 was held under very different conditions. The civil war was at its height, a large proportion of the loyal voters were in the army, and Southern sympathizers led by Clement L. VALLANDIGHAM, were openly defiant. VALLANDIGHAM was arrested for disloyal utterances, tried by court-martial, and banished from the United States. He was sent within the Confederate lines, and subsequently received the regular Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio. There was apparently some danger that he would actually be elected by the “peace” faction of the party. At this crisis Mr. BROUGH made a speech at Marietta, declaring slavery destroyed by the act of rebellion, and earnestly appealing to all patriots, of whatever previous political affiliations, to unite against the Southern rebels. He was immediately put before the people by the Republican Union party as a candidate for governor, and the majority that elected him (101,099) was the largest ever given for a governor in any State up to that time. In the discharge of his duties as chief magistrate he was laborious, far-sighted, clear in his convictions of duty, firm in their maintenance, and fearless in their execution. He was distinctly the “War Governor of Ohio.”

 

Whitelaw REID says of him: “Gov. BROUGH was impetuous, strong-willed, indifferent to personal considerations, often regardless of men’s feelings, always disposed to try them by a standard of integrity to which the world is not accustomed. His administration was constantly embroiled; now with the Sanitary Commission, then with the officers in the field, again with the surgeons. But every struggle was begun and ended in the interest of the private soldiers as against the tyranny or neglect of their superiors; in the interest of subordinate officers as against those who sought to keep them down; in the interest of the men who fought as against those who shirked; in the interest of the maimed as against the sound; in the interest of their families as against all other expenditures. Never was a knight of the old chivalry more unselfishly loyal to the defence of the defenceless.

 

BROUGH was a statesman. His views of public policy were broad and catholic, and his course was governed by what seemed to be the best interests of the people, without regard to party expediency or personal advancement. He was honest and incorruptible, rigidly just and plain, even to bluntness. He had not a particle of dissimulation. People thought him ill-natured, rude, and hard-hearted. He was not; he was simply a plain, honest, straightforward man, devoted to business. He had not the suaviter in modo. This was perhaps unfortunate for himself, but the public interests suffered nothing thereby. He was, moreover, a kind-hearted man, easily affected by the sufferings of others, and ready to relieve suffering when he found the genuine article. He, perhaps, mistrusted more than some men, but when he was convinced he did not measure his gifts. He was a good judge of character. He looked a man through and through at first sight. Hence no one hated a rogue more than he; and, on the other hand, no one had a warmer appreciation of a man of good principles. He was a devoted friend.

 

As a public speaker BROUGH had few superiors. His style was clear, fluent, and logical, while at times he was impassioned and eloquent. When the famous joint campaign was being made between CORWIN and SHANNON for governor the Democratic leaders found it expedient to withdraw SHANNON and substitute BROUGH, in order that they might not utterly fail in the canvass. CORWIN and BROUGH were warm friends, and none of BROUGH’s partisans ever had a higher admiration for his genius than had CORWIN.

 

 

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through him hoped for eternal life. He remarked that he had never been a demonstrative man, but his faith had, nevertheless, been firmly and deeply grounded.”

 

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, president of the Standard Oil Company, at Cleveland, Ohio, was born, the son of a physician, July 8, 1839, in Central New York. In 1853 he removed to Cleveland. In the spring of 1858 he formed a partnership with M. B. CLARK in the produce commission business, and the firm having in 1862 become interested in the refining of petroleum, Mr. ROCKEFELLER’S energies became so interested that, in 1865, he sold out his share in the commission business and gave his entire attention to the refining of petroleum. He established the firm of ROCKEFELLER & ANDREWS, and from this beginning the Standard Oil Company was developed. This company was organized in 1870 with a capital of a million dollars. From the “Biographical Cyclopaedia” of Ohio we take the following account of the gigantic interests controlled by this concern.

 

“Large tracts of land were purchased and fine warehouses erected for the storage of petroleum; a considerable number of iron cars were procured, and the business of transporting oil entered upon; interests were purchased in oil pipes in the producing regions, so that the company and its associates controlled about 200 miles of oil pipes and several hundred thousand barrels of oil tankage. Works were erected for the manufacture of barrels, paints, and glue, and everything used in the manufacture or shipment of oil. The works had a capacity of distilling 29,000 barrels of crude oil per day, and from 3,500 to 4,000 men were employed in the various departments. The cooperage factory, the largest in the world, turned out 9,000 barrels a day, which consumed over 200,000 staves and headings, the product of from fifteen to twenty acres of selected oak. When it is remembered that it was formerly the full labor of one man to manufacture three or four barrels daily, the magnitude of this accessory to the business can be realized. Only about forty per cent, of the company’s business was done in Cleveland, the remainder being widely diffused over the country, stimulating industry and traffic wherever it was established; but, the business originating in Cleveland, the managers felt a pride in keeping a large proportion of it in that city.

 

With the exception, perhaps, of the combined iron industries of the city, the oil refining interests, almost entirely owned by the Standard Oil Company, made larger additions to the wealth and growth of Cleveland than did any other one branch of trade or manufacture. The greater part of the product was shipped to Europe, and the market for it was found in all parts of that continent and the British Islands; in fact, all over the world. Every part of the United States was supplied from the main distilling point (Cleveland), and the company virtually controlled the oil market of this continent, and, in fact, of the world. Besides the president, the principal active members of the company were William ROCKEFELLER, vice-president; H. M. FLAGLER, secretary; Col. O. H. PAYNE, treasurer, and S. ANDREWS, superintendent, who had charge of the manufacturing. The success of the company was largely due to the energy, foresight, and unremitting labors of its founder and president.”

 

The great responsibilities and labor of such immense enterprises as have engaged the attention of Mr. ROCKEFELLER have prevented his taking a leading part in public life. He has, however, always given freely to all patriotic, benevolent and religious purposes, and many a worthy cause owes success to the private and unostentatious aid from him. The city of Cleveland owes much to him, not alone from the indirect benefit derived from the immense industries he controlled, but also from improvements in real estate within its limits.

 

He is a member of the Second Baptist church, with which he has been connected for about twenty years–two years as a scholar, twelve or thirteen years as a teacher, and the remainder as superintendent of its Sabbath and Mission schools–and he has made liberal donations to its fund, as he did also to the Baptist college at Granville.

 

He is essentially a man of progress, and the rare success which has attended him through life is attributable to his enterprising, ambitious spirit, the confidence his integrity and ability inspired in others, a power of concentrating his mind and energies in a special, well-chosen channel, and a systematic, judiciously economical method of engineering and managing great projects. Foremost among those who gave him timely assistance and aid in his early struggles he ever cherished the memory of T. P. HANDY, Esq., who has ever been a great power, a promoter of whatever appertained to the moral and material interests of the city. In 1864 Mr. ROCKEFELLER married Miss Laura C. SPELMAN, of Cleveland

 

AMASA STONE was born in Charlton, Massachusetts, April 27, 1818, and died in Cleveland, May 11, 1883. He was a man of remarkable activity of body and mind; we look over the record of his life with a sense of astonishment that one man could have directed and completed so many large enterprises.

 

 

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In 1845 he assumed the duties of superintendent of the New Haven, Hartford & Springfield railroad, but shortly resigned to devote his entire time to bridge and railroad construction.

 

One of his enterprises, which at that day was considered a marvel of dispatch, was the reconstruction in forty days of a bridge on the New Haven, Hartford & Springfield road over the Connecticut river at Enfield Falls, which had been carried away by a storm.

 

Shortly after this Mr. STONE dissolved the partnership with Mr. BOODY and formed another with Mr. D. L. HARRIS for Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, and still another with Mr. Stillman WITT and Mr. Frederick HARBACH for the construction of the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati road, from Cleveland to Columbus. The enterprise was carried through so satisfactorily to the owners of the road, that on its completion Mr. STONE was offered and accepted the superintendency and in 1850 made his home at Cleveland.

 

Immediately thereafter he engaged in the construction of a railroad from Cleveland to Erie, which was successfully accomplished, and he was also offered the superintendence of this road, being for some years superintendent of both roads, as well as a director in the companies which owned them.

 

From a sketch in the “Magazine of Western History” we quote the following: “ He was for a long time president of the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula railroad, and in 1858, in company with his partner and life-long friend, Stillman WITT, he contracted to build the Chicago & Milwaukee railroad, of which he became and remained for many years a prominent director. He was also a director of the Jamestown & Franklin and of the Tuscarawas Valley, now the Cleveland, Lorain & Wheeling railroad and of several others.

 

He was not only one of the most successful railway contractors and administrators in the United States, but there was not a single department of financial or industrial enterprise in which he did not seem to bear a conspicuous and useful part. He was one of the leading bankers of the State of Ohio–a director in the Merchants’ Bank, the Bank of Commerce, the Second National Bank, the Commercial National Bank and the Cleveland Banking Company, all of the city of Cleveland. He was the president of the Toledo branch of the State Bank of Ohio, and president of the Mercer Iron and Coal Company. He also gave financial aid and wise and sagacious counsel to many manufacturing enterprises. He constructed iron mills, woolen mills, car works and other manufacturing establishments. He designed and built the Union Passenger Depot at Cleveland. He was, we believe, the first man to design and build pivot bridges of long span, and he was constantly introducing important improvements in the construction of railway cars, locomotives, and all the appliances of the great transportation system of the country. During the war for the Union Mr. STONE was an ardent and active supporter of the administration of Mr. LINCOLN, of whom he was a trusted friend and counsellor. The President frequently sent for him to come to Washington to advise him in the most important problems of supply and transportation of the army. He tendered him an appointment as brigadier-general, for the purpose of superintending the construction of a military railway from Kentucky to Knoxville, Tennessee, a project which was, on Mr. STONE’s advice, afterwards relinquished by the government. . .

 

Soon after the war closed he met with a great misfortune in the death of his only son. Adelbert Barnes STONE, who was drowned while bathing in the Connecticut river, being at the time a student in Yale college. . .

 

In 1873, at the earnest solicitation of Commodore VANDERBILT and other large stockholders of the Lake Shore road, he assumed charge of that road as managing director, but two years afterwards resigned it, and from that time onward steadily declined any position involving great labor or responsibility. He had for many years been planning in his mind a series of important benefactions to the city of Cleveland, and he now devoted his leisure to carrying them successively into effect. He first built and endowed the Home for Aged Women on Kennard street, a beautiful and estimable charity, by means of which ladies stricken in years and misfortune find a peaceful refuge for their age. His next work was the construction and presentation to the Children’s Aid Society of the commodious stone edifice on Detroit street, as a place of shelter and instruction for destitute children gathered up by that admirable institution from the streets and saved from lives of vice and ignorance to be placed in respectable Christian homes. When this work was completed he made ready in his mind for the greatest and most important of his benefactions. On condition that the Western Reserve college at Hudson should remove to Cleveland and assume in its classical department the name of his lost and lamented son, he endowed it with the munificent sum of half a million dollars, which at his desire after his death was increased by his family to the amount of six hundred thousand dollars. In each of these cases he gave not merely his money, but his constant labor and supervision in all the details of construction and administration. He gave of himself as liberally as of his means. . .

 

He had a mind remarkable for its grasp both of great and minute matters. In discussing the construction of a railroad he could compute, without putting pencil to paper, the probable expenses of engineering and equipment, amounting to millions; and he was equally ready in the smallest things. . .

 

 

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But he never lost the inherent American democracy of his character; the puddler from the rolling mill, the brakeman of the railroad was always as sure of a courteous and considerate hearing from him as a senator or a millionaire. There was no man in the country great enough to daunt him, and none so simple as to receive from him the treatment of an inferior. He was a man extraordinarily clean in heart, in hand and in lips.”

 

JEPHTHA H. WADE was born in Seneca county, N. Y., August 11, 1811, the son of a surveyor and civil engineer. He early gave evidence of great mechanical and inventive ability, combined with great executive capacity. Before arriving at the age of twenty-one he was the owner of a large sash and blind factory. He studied portrait-painting under Randall PALMER, a celebrated artist, and achieved considerable reputation as an artist, and when about thirty years of age became interested in the discovery of Daguerre. Being then located at Adrian, Mich., he procured a camera and took the first daguerrotype ever made west of New York; but about this time the invention of telegraphy attracted his attention, and he opened and equipped the Jackson office, along the Michigan Central line, the first road built west of Buffalo.

 

Later he entered into the construction of telegraph lines in Ohio and other Western States, which were known as WADE’S lines. He made many important telegraphic inventions and improvements, among which was WADE’S insulator. He was also the first to enclose a sub-marine cable in iron armor, on a line across the Mississippi river at St. Louis. This was a very important invention, as, through it, the crossing of oceans and large bodies of water was made practicable.

 

The numerous rival telegraph companies which had sprung up in the West were engaged in a ruinous competition when a consolidation was effected under the name of the Western Union Telegraph Company, with Mr. WADE as general manager.

 

Largely through Mr. WADE’s efforts the construction of a trans-continental line was commenced under his superintendence in the spring of 1861, and through his efficient management, in October of the same year communication opened. In California he consolidated the competing lines and was made the first president of the Pacific Telegraph Company, which was in turn consolidated with the Western Union Company and Mr. WADE made president of the entire consolidation, a position which he filled until 1867, when he retired from active business life on account of ill health. His retirement, however, did not preclude his engaging in an advisory capacity in many large enterprises. He is a leading director in several factories, banks, railroads and other institutions.

 

His great interest and enterprise in the development of the city of Cleveland has resulted in great benefit to that city, he having opened and improved many streets and localities and originated the Lake View Cemetery association, with its more than 300 acres of tastefully arranged grounds. At great expense he beautified an extensive tract of land adjoining Euclid avenue, known as WADE Park, and opened it to the enjoyment of the public. He also built for the Cleveland Protestant Children’s Home a fine large fire-proof building, with accommodations for from 100 to 150 children.

 

Mr. WADE’S life has been one of great benefit and usefulness to his fellow-men, not only in his private and public charities, but in opening up new avenues of industry, thus contributing to the wealth and comfort of the community at large.

 

Colonel CHARLES WHITTLESEY was born in Southington, Conn., October 4, 1808. His father, Asaph WHITTLESEY, wife and two children, started in the spring of 1813 for Tallmadge, Portage county. The wilderness was full of perils from savage men and beasts and the journey a long and hard one, with many incidents of trial, so that their destination was not reached until July. His father having settled at Tallmadge, Charles spent his summers in work on the farm and winters at school. Tallmadge was settled by a colony of New England Congregationalists, and the religious austerity and strict morality of the inhabitants had much influence upon the mind of Charles, who had inherited from his father a vigorous mind and great energy and from his mother studious habits and literary tastes. Reared midst the severe surroundings of the early pioneer days, he learned to realize at an early age the earnestness of life and the vast possibilities of this new country. He saw Ohio develop from a wilderness to a wonderfully productive and intelligent commonwealth of more than 3,000,000 inhabitants.

 

In 1827 he entered West Point, graduating there from in 1831, when he became brevet second-lieutenant in the Sixth United States Infantry.

 

Later he exchanged with a brother officer into the Fifth United States Infantry, with headquarters at Mackinaw, and started in November on a vessel through the lakes, reaching his post after a voyage of much hardship and suffering from the severity of the weather. Here he was assigned to the company of Capt. Martin SCOTT, the famous shot and hunter.

 

At the close of the Black Hawk war Lieut. WHITTLESEY resigned from the army and opened a law office in Cleveland, and in connection with his law practice was occupied as part owner and co-editor of the Whig and Herald until 1837, when he was appointed assistant geologist of the Ohio Survey. This was disbanded in 1839 through lack of appropriations to carry on the work, but not before great and permanent good had been done in disclosing the mineral wealth of the State, thus laying the foundation for immense manufacturing industries.

 

During this survey Col. WHITTLESEY had become much interested in the geology and ancient earthworks of the State, and after

 

 

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its disbandment induced Mr. Joseph SULLIVANT, a wealthy gentleman of Columbus, much interested in archaeology, to furnish means for continuing investigation into the works of the Mound Builders, with a view to a joint publication.

 

During the years 1839 and 1840, under this arrangement, he examined nearly all the remaining earthworks then discovered, but nothing was done toward publication of the results until some years later, when much of the material gathered was used in the publication by the Smithsonian Institute of the great work of SQUIER & DAVIS. The first volume of that work says:

 

“Among the most zealous investigators in the field of American antiquarian research is Charles WHITTLESEY, Esq., of Cleveland, formerly topographical engineer of Ohio. His surveys and observations, carried on for many years and over a wide field, have been both numerous and accurate, and are among the most valuable in all respects of any hitherto made. Although Mr. WHITTLESEY, in conjunction with Joseph SULLIVANT, Esq., of Columbus, originally contemplated a joint work in which the results of his investigations should be embodied, he has, nevertheless, with a liberality which will be not less appreciated by the public than by the authors, contributed to this memoir about twenty plans of ancient works which, with the accompanying explanations and general observations, will be found embodied in the following pages.

 

It is to be hoped the public may be put in possession of the entire results of Mr. WHITTLESEY’S labor, which could not fail of adding greatly to our stock of knowledge on this interesting subject.”

 

Among other discoveries of Mr. WHITTLESEY in connection with the ancient earthworks of Ohio was that the Mound Builders were two different races of people, the “long-headed and short-headed,” so called from the shape of their skulls.

 

In 1844 Mr. WHITTLESEY made an agricultural survey of Hamilton county. That year a great excitement was created by the explorations and reports of Dr. Houghton in the copper mines of Michigan. Companies were organized for their development and from Point Keweenaw to the Montreal river the forests swarmed with adventurers as eager and hopeful as those of California in 1848. Iron ore was beneath their notice.

 

A company was organized in Detroit in 1845 and Mr. WHITTLESEY appointed geologist. In August they launched their boat and pulled away for Copper harbor, and thence to the region between Portage lake and the Ontonagon river, where the Algonquin and Douglass HOUGHTON mines were opened. The party narrowly escaped drowning the night they landed.

 

Col. WHITTLESEY has given an interesting account of their adventures in an article entitled “Two Months in the Copper Regions,” published in the National Magazine of New York City.

 

In 1847 he was employed by the United States government to make a geological survey of the land about Lake Superior and the Upper Mississippi river. His survey was of very great value and gave proofs of great scientific ability and judgment. He was afterwards engaged by the State of Wisconsin to make a survey of that State, which work was uncompleted when the war of the rebellion broke out.

 

Upon his return to Cleveland, Col. WHITTLESEY became identified with a local military organization which was tendered to Gen. SCOTT early in the year 1861. On April 17, 1861, he became assistant quartermaster general upon the Governor’s staff, and he was immediately sent to the field in Western Virginia, where he served during the three months’ term as State military engineer with the Ohio troops. He re-entered the three years’ service as colonel of the Twentieth regiment Ohio volunteers. He was detailed as chief engineer of the department of Ohio, and at the battle of Shiloh on the second day of the fight was placed in the command of the third brigade of Gen. WALLACE’s division, and was specially commended for bravery. Soon after this engagement he resigned from the army. Gen. GRANT endorsed his application: “We cannot afford to lose so good an officer.” The following letter written soon after his decease shows in what estimation he was held by his army associates.

 

                “CINCINNATI, O., Nov. 10, 1886.

“DEAR MRS. WHITTLESEY: Your noble husband has got release from the pains and ills that made life a burden. His active life was a lesson to us how to live. His latter years showed us how to endure. To all of us in the Twentieth regiment he seemed a father. I do not know any other colonel that was so revered by his regiment. Since the war he has constantly surprised me with his incessant literary and scientific activity. Always his character was an example and an incitement.

 

                                “Very truly yours,

                                                “M. F. FORCE.”

 

After retiring from the army Col. WHITTLESEY again turned his attention to explorations in the Lake Superior and Upper Mississippi river basins, and “new additions to the mineral wealth of the country were the result of his surveys and researches.”

 

In 1867 Col. WHITTLESEY organized the Western Reserve Historical Society, and was its president until his death, which occurred in 1866. The latter years of Col. WHITTLESEY’s life were full of ceaseless activity and research in scientific and historical fields. His published literary works were very numerous, commencing in 1833 and ending with his death; they number one hundred and ninety-one books and pamphlets.

 

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THE OLD WHITTLESY HOMESTEAD, EUCLID AVENUE.

 

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instrumental in discovering and causing the development of the great iron and copper regions of Lake Superior.”

 

Judge BALDWIN, from whose sketch of Col. WHITTLESEY in the “Magazine of Western History” we take most of the facts given in this sketch, says:

 

“As an American archaeologist Col. WHITTLESEY was very learned and thorough. He had in Ohio the advantage of surveying its wonderful works at an early date. He had, too, that cool poise and self-possession that prevented his enthusiasm from coloring his judgment. He completely avoided errors into which a large share of archaeologist fall. The scanty information as to the past and its romantic interest lead to easy but dangerous theories, and even suffers the practice of many impositions. He was of late years of great service in exposing frauds, and thereby helped the science to a healthy tone. It may be well enough to say that in one of his tracts he exposed, on what was apparently the best evidence, the supposed falsity of the Cincinnati table, so called. Its authenticity was defended by Mr. Robert CLARKE, of Cincinnati, successfully and convincingly to Col. WHITTLESEY himself. I was with the colonel when he first heard of the successful defence, and with a mutual friend who thought he might be chagrined, but he was so much more interested in the truth for its own sake than in his relations to it that he appeared much pleased with the result.

 

“He impressed his associates as being full of learning, not from books but nevertheless of all around–the roads, the fields, the sky, men, animals or plants. Charming it was to be with him in excursions; that was really life and elevated the mind and heart.”

 

He was a profoundly religious man, never ostentatiously so, but to him religion and science were twin and inseparable companions. They were in his life and thought, and he wished to and did live to express in print his sense that the God of science was the God of religion, and that the “Maker had not lost power over the thing made.”

 

Some literary characters of national reputation have been identified with Cleveland. Early among American humorists was CHARLES F. BROWNE, “Artemus Ward.” His wit first scintillated here and later came in to brighten some of the dark days of Abraham LINCOLN; and JOHN HAY has his home here, the author of “Castilian Days” and “Little Breeches,” and whose writings upon Mr. LINCOLN are of such prime value as to give him an enduring reputation. The city was the girlhood and early womanhood home of CONSTANCE FENNIMORE WOOLSON, who wrote “East Angels” and “Anne,” and likewise is the birth-place and early home of another female writer of children’s books and pleasing verses, Sarah WOOLSEY, under the pen-name of Susan COOLIDGE; and then a third, Mrs. Sarah Knowles BOLTON, who although not Ohio-born is Ohio-living.

 

TRAVELLING NOTES

 

When I first knew Cleveland, now about half a century ago, it was a small place with only a few thousand people. Even then it had a distinction of being an attractive spot from the beauty of its situation and adornments of trees and shrubbery and was called “the Forest City.” The people of the town largely lived in small houses, but many of these were pretty, simple cottages, showing refinement from their social porches and surroundings of flowers and shrubbery.

 

The city had a grand start from the character of its human stock. Indeed, I think the historian BANCROFT somewhere has said, speaking of the entire Western Reserve, that the average grade of intelligence in its population exceeded that of any other equal era of people on the globe.

 

Euclid avenue, too, was acquiring a reputation for beauty. One residence upon it, that of Judge Thomas H. KELLY, Gen. HARRISON said was the handsomest in Ohio. It is yet a fine home-like domicile, but cannot compare with the palatial mansions now there.

 

But magnificent as these are, there is standing to-day upon this avenue one little cottage that, to my eye, is more attractive than them all, and because it had long been the home of the late Charles WHITTLESEY, the most learned of Ohio’s historians; the most original, philosophic and varied in his investigations, alike in the realms of science and of events.

 

The WHITTLESEY home-place is about three miles from the centre, a white cottage, standing a few rods back from the avenue, partially hid by evergreens. As I approached it on this tour to make a call upon my old friend, who I had not seen in many years, I was surprised at the discovery at the path-side of what seemed to me an original sort of door-plate. It was a small white boulder, dotted with red spots-jasper. The front side was polished, and on it was carved CHARLES WHITTLESEY. It was a block of breccia, conglomerated quartz and jasper, the natural home of which was the north shore of Lake Superior. Only four such have been found in Ohio, brought here in the ice age, though common in Michigan. This identical block was procured by Mr. WHITTLESEY and shipped from the north shore of Lake Huron.

 

My visit was on a bright summer afternoon. I found “the Colonel,” as everybody called him, not in his cottage, but in his garden, and the way I went thither was interesting–in at the front door and then out at the back door, through the little low rooms, filled with the books and utilities of the old student and scientist, life-long loves and companions, silent teachers of God, man and the universe.

 

 

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sun of July 3, 1886. As I approached he did not at first hear my footsteps; he was gazing into vacancy, his mind evidently far away amid scenes of a long, eventful life; at times, perhaps, on the far-away wilderness with savages, away back in the forties, surveying in the wintry snows of the Lake Superior country, or on the battle-field of Shiloh, or, perhaps, to his still earlier experiences when a boy, when this century was young, he was beginning life in a cabin among the struggling pioneers of Portage county.

 

Yes, gazing into vacancy from the tent door, a rather small, aged man, a blonde, and bald and evidently an invalid. He wore a dressing-gown, and, as I later saw, when he moved it was slowly, painfully, in bent attitude and leaning on a cane.

 

Around him strewed on the boarded tent were a few books, a map or two and relics of by-gone days; the old military suit he wore in the Black Hawk war in 1832, when he was one of Uncle Sam’s lieutenants of infantry, a stiff, black hat, bell-crowned, with a receptacle for a pompon, ancient sword with curving blade, and old-fashioned military coat with rear appendage of hanging flaps. He had save it so long (for fifty-four years) that I fancied the moths must have owed him a grudge.

 

The Colonel had heard I was coming and sent word he wanted to see me. I got an honest greeting. There was no gush about him. He was one of the most plain, simple of men, a terse talker, giving out nuggets of facts–so terse that if perchance a listener let his mind go a wool gathering for a second and lost two or three words he would be clear broken up.

 

He told me that was the forth summer in which he had passed several hours daily in his tent. This was to take sun baths, from which he thought then for the first time he was experiencing a decided benefit. Asking what was his special ailment he replied: “I have five chronic complaints, and all in full blast.” When asked why soldiers did not take cold in tents he answered: “Because the temperature is always even. Indoors we cannot avoid uneven temperatures and in changing from tent life to house life one is apt to take cold.”

 

No intelligent man could long listen to Mr. WHITTLESEY without feeling his intellect stimulated, and valuable facts were being poured in for storage. His conversation, too, was enlivened by little flashes of grim humor, which he gave forth apparently unconscious, with a fixed, sedate expression. And if you then smiled he gave no answering smile, and you would be apt to think you had not heard him aright.

 

The learned man had helped me on my first edition; had contributed an article on the geology of the State. The science was then new and the article is not obsolete. He wanted to help me on this edition, and wrote for it “The Pioneer Engineers of Ohio.”

 

There is another article also in this book by him, “Sources of Ohio’s Strength,” but of the great characters therein portrayed no one had greater breadth of knowledge, not one so varied knowledge, not one a finer intellect, not one was more worthy of the respect and veneration of the people of the commonwealth than Charles WHITTLESEY. And it is a singular gratification to me that he of all others of the many who contributed papers to my first edition should have contributed to this edition. An he was the only one of them all who was living and could do so.

 

After this and another interview I saw him no more. His work was finished. He passed away in the autumn, and the white boulder with blushing spots that adorned the front yard of the cottage is also gone and now rests over his burial spot in peaceful Woodlawn. With a sense of profound gratitude I pen this tribute not only to one of Ohio’s great men, but to one of the nation’s great men.

 

Much gratification was derived this time in Cleveland by a call upon Mr. John A. FOOTE, an old lawyer, an octogenarian, of whom I had all my life heard but never met until now. He was a brother of Admiral FOOTE and son of that Governor FOOTE of Connecticut who, when in the United States Senate, introduced a resolution, historically known as “FOOTE’s resolution,” which led to the famous debate between Daniel WEBSTER and Mr. HAYNE, of South Carolina.

 

Mr. FOOTE first came here from Cheshire, Connecticut, in the summer of 1833, and was for years a member of the eminent law firm of ANDREWS, FOOTE & HOYT. He was born in 1803 on the site of the Tontine Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, but his home at the time of leaving was in Cheshire. The town was overwhelmingly Democratic, and he was a Whig, but as the State Legislature was in session but for a few weeks his townsmen irrespective of politics, “in town meeting duly assembled,” gave him and a Mr. Edward A. CORNWALL, prior to their departure for the distant wilds of Ohio, as a parting compliment, the privilege of representing them in that body. So they went down to Hartford and passed a few weeks pleasantly among the “Shad Eaters,” as, in the humorous parlance, of the time, the members were called, from the fact that they met in May, the season of shad-catching in the Connecticut.

 

The year 1883 came around when FOOTE and CORNWALL, after a lapse thus of fifty years, in company visited the Legislature of Connecticut at Hartford and were received with great eclat. The House passed some complimentary resolutions, signed by the speaker and clerk, expressive of their high gratification. These Mr. FOOTE with commendable pride pointed out to me framed on his parlor wall, and we copied the last:

 

 

 

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dent which we believe to be without a parallel in the history of American legislative bodies.

                “CHAS. H. PINE, Speaker.

                “DONALD S PERKINS, Clerk.

 

“Passed February 22, 1883, WASHINGTON’s birthday.”

 

Mr. FOOTE told me that what struck him as the most notable thing on his arrival in Cleveland in the summer of 1833 was the caving in of the lake shore by the encroachments of the waves upon the sands of the bank. Whole acres disappeared in a single season, so that in time the town site seemed doomed to disappear. They had continually to move buildings away from the remorseless waters.

 

Mr. Charles WHITTLESEY then devised the plan of driving piles along the lake shore, and it was a perfect success.

 

Mr. FOOTE is a neighbor of the highly esteemed and widely known Harvey RICE, who I found also a fine specimen of happy old age. He was then eighty-six years old, tall, erect, his powers well preserved and able to read and write without glasses.

 

BEREA is on the C. C. C. & I. And L. S. & M. S. R. R., 12 miles southwest of Cleveland. It is the seat of Baldwin University and the German Wallace College. Natural gas is used to some extent. Newspapers: Advertiser, Republican, E. D. PEEBLES, editor and manager; Grit, S. S. BROWN, publisher. Churches: 1 Methodist Episcopal, 1 Congregational, 1 Episcopal and 2 Catholic. Bank of Berea, Thos. CHURCHWARD, president, A. H. POMEROY, cashier.

 

Industries.–The Berea stone quarries are renowned throughout the whole country for superior quality and inexhaustible supply. Population in 1880, 1,682. School census in 1886, 558; J. W. BOWLES, superintendent.

 

At an early day there was in the village a peculiar industry to be established in what was then almost in the woods; this was the “globe factory” of Josiah HOLBROOK for the manufacture of globes and various kinds of school apparatus. At one time he employed about a dozen men and did a large business. The factory remained until about 1852.

 

Berea, as has been mentioned, has long been famous for its manufacture of grindstones, and many before the invention of the “Baldwin blower” died of what was called “grindstone consumption,” their lungs being found after death to be filled with the fine, flour-like dust with which the air was impregnated. The disease is now unknown. We visited the spot at that period and watched the interesting process of turning out grindstones. In conversation with one of the workmen he complained to us with a sigh, as though it was hard work to breathe, of the continuous oppressive feeling he had at his chest from the fine powder which was steadily accumulating and filling up his lungs, and there was no remedy. It was a horrible necessity, working for bread while every hour of industry was but the taking in of more dust for a suffocating death.

 

The following article upon the Berea Sandstone industry has been contributed for these pages by Mr. E. D. PEEBLES, editor at Berea.

 

Berea Sandstone, the economic value of which is now well known all over the country, lies in a stratum about sixty feet in thickness, under the drift clay and shales that are found everywhere in Northern Ohio. The stone has no surface exposure, excepting where cut through by water courses. In color it is a grayish white, free from pebbles and bedded in layers varying in thickness from six inches to ten feet. These layers usually have a good bed-seam, so that they can be quarried separately and with regard to the use for which they are especially adapted. The best sheets are reserved for grindstones, which require a smooth, even texture, neither too soft or too hard, free from cracks, flaws or hard spots and must split well; other grades are used for building purposes, flagging, etc. The Berea rock is especially fine for grindstones, while its beauty and durability for architectural purposes is unsurpassed.

 

This rock has been worked for more than forty years. The early pioneers were not slow to discover that a grindstone worked out of Berea stone was an indispensable article to every will-regulated farm, household or workshop.

 

The demand for it became so urgent that John BALDWIN, foreseeing its value as an article of commercial industry, devoted his energies to its development.

 

 

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that knew no defeat, and a Christianity whose mantle was charity. He was the founder of Baldwin University, located at Berea.

 

When BALDWIN first gave his attention to Berea stone grindstones were cut out by hand, but he conceived the idea of turning them. Having no shaft or mandle suitable for such work, he made a model of basswood, and one moonlight night placed it on his shoulder and walked to Cleveland (distant fourteen

 

VIEW AT THE QUARIES, BEREA.

 

miles) to have one made, and with but slight improvement this model is in use at the present time.                                         

 

In former times much of the rock was wasted in quarrying and cutting, but little sawing being done. Now nearly all the cutting is by steam-power, and about twenty gangs of the most improved saws are kept at work in season night and day. The quarries are below drainage and steam pumps are constantly at work pumping out water.

 

Some idea of the proportions of this industry can be formed by the statement that of the 3,000 inhabitants of Berea, three-fourths get their living directly or indirectly from the quarries; from nine to twelve thousand cars are annually loaded with stone taken from the quarries, and if placed in a continuous line would make a train fifty miles long.

Great improvements have been made in the preparation of the stone for the market. Formerly the grindstones were sent to the consumer hung on a crude home-made shaft and frame, which was placed under the apple tree on the farm. And the farmer boy of the past can well remember how he used to suffer while turning that stone, eagerly watching to see if the hand-blistering, back-breaking job was not most done. Now they are mounted on frames with friction-rollers so that a child can turn them without fatigue, or they can be used with a treadle.

 

The stone business of Northern Ohio is an immense industry, employing millions of capital and thousands of laborers; now under one management, that of the Cleveland Stone Company, with headquarters at Cleveland. It includes the quarries at Berea, North Amherst, Columbia, West View, Olmstead and La Grange. The Garfield monument and the Cleveland viaduct are built of Berea stone; on the latter were used over two millions of cubic feet. From the quarries of the Cleveland Stone Company have been built some of the noblest public buildings of the Western States and Canada, as the Masonic Temple and Central High School, Cleveland; Parliament Buildings, Ottawa; University Building, Toronto; Palmer House, Chicago; Michigan State Capitol, Lansing; Chamber of Commerce Building, Milwaukee; Government Court House and Post Office, Columbus, etc.

 

 

 

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Industries.–Paper, flour and grocer sacks, iron, wooden-ware handles, carriages, canvas-boats, etc. Population in 1880, 1,211. School census in 1886, 346; C. W. RANDALL, superintendent.

 

The view of Chagrin Falls was drawn and engraved for the first edition in

            CHAGRIN FALLS IN 1846

 

1846 by Mr. Jehu BRAINARD, of Cleveland, who made and presented it to us to memorialize himself in the work. His picture has the newness, the crudity in appearance which the village at the time presented. It looked to us then as though it had just emerged from the woods; its people were full of the fire of a good beginning, and fancying that some day theirs would be a great place. Among their congratulations were the facts that they had a daily stage to Cleveland and that the Cleveland and Pittsburg stages ran through their town.

 

The name of Chagrin was originally applied to the river, then to the present village of Willoughby, and later to the town with the adjunct of the word “Falls.” Chrisfield JOHNSON, in his excellent “History of Cuyahoga County,” issued in 1879, says: “The name of the river Chagrin is undoubtedly derived from the old Indian word ‘Shagrin,’ which is to be found applied to it on maps issued before the Revolution. ‘Shagrin’ is supposed to mean ‘clear,’ but this is not so certain.” On EVANS’S map, published in 1755, the river is called “Elk.” Harvey RICE, in his sketch of Moses CLEAVELAND, states that he with his surveying party on the 4^th of July, 1796, landed at Conneaut and celebrated Independence Day, and then in the course of two weeks he “left Conneaut in company with a select few of his staff and coasted along the southeastern shore of Lake Erie until he came to the mouth of a river which he took to be the Cuyahoga. He ascended the stream for some distance, amid many embarrassments arising from the sand bars and fallen trees, when he discovered his mistake and found it was a shallow stream and not noted on his map. This perplexity and delay so chagrined him that he named it the Chagrin, a designation by which it is still known.”

 

We here introduce an incident in the life of a pioneer woman who until near the time of the issue of our original edition was living in this vicinity.

 

 

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yielded but little nourishment. The children in vain asked food, promising to be satisfied with the least possible portion. The boy, Basil, remembered to have seen some kernels of corn in a crack of one of the logs of the cabin, and passed hours in an unsuccessful search for them.

 

Mrs. THORP emptied the straw out of her bed and picked it over to obtain the little wheat it contained, which she boiled and gave to her children. Her husband, it seems, had taught her to shoot at a mark, in which she acquired great skill. When all her means for procuring food were exhausted, she saw, as she stood in her cabin door, a wild turkey flying near. She took down her husband’s rifle, and, on looking for ammunition, was surprised to find only sufficient for a small charge. Carefully cleaning the barrel, so as not to lose any by its sticking to the sides as it went down, she set some apart for priming and loaded the piece with the remainder, and started in pursuit of the turkey, reflecting that on her success depended the lives of herself and children. Under the excitement of her feelings she came near defeating her object, by frightening the turkey, which flew a short distance and again alighted in a potato patch. Upon this, she returned to the house and waited until the fowl had begun to wallow in the loose earth. On her second approach, she acted with great caution and coolness, creeping slyly on her hands and knees from log to log until she had gained the last obstruction between herself and the desired object. It was now a trying moment, and a crowd of emotions passed through her mind as she lifted the rifle to a level with her eye. She fired; the result was fortunate: the turkey was killed and herself and family preserved from death by her skill. Mrs. THORP married three times. Her first husband was killed in Canada, in the war of 1812; her second was supposed to have been murdered. Her last husband’s name was GORDINER. She died in Orange, in this county, Nov. 1, 1846.

 

COLLINWOOD is 7 miles northeast of Cleveland, on Lake Erie. Its inhabitants are mostly employees of the L. S. & M. S. R. R., it being the terminus of two divisions of that road and location of large freight yards. Churches: 1 Congregationalist and 1 Christian. Population in 1880, 792. School census in 1886, 436; T. W. BYRNS, superintendent.

 

NEWBURGH, a suburb of and part of the corporate city of Cleveland, connected with it by four railroads and a street car line. It is about five miles from Cleveland centre. Newspaper: South Cleveland Advocate, Republican, H. H. NELSON, editor and proprietor. Churches: 1 Episcopal, 1 English and 1 Welsh Baptist, 1 English and 1 Welsh Methodist Episcopal, 2 Presbyterian, 1 Welsh Congregational, 1 Disciple, and 1 Catholic. A State hospital for the insane is located here.

 

BROOKLYN, a suburb of Cleveland, is about 5 miles south of Cleveland Centre, on the Cuyahoga river, and Valley Railroad. Calvin College is located here. Newspaper: Cuyahogan, Republican, C. F. BEACHLER, editor and proprietor. Churches: 1 Congregational, 1 Methodist Episcopal. Population in 1880, 1,295. School census in 1886, 801; A. G. COMINGS, superintendent.

 

The following is a list of villages in this county not previously mentioned, with their populations in 1880: Bedford, a place noted for its chair manufactories, 766; West Cleveland, 1,781; East Cleveland, 2,876; Glenville, 797; Independence, 262; Olmstead Falls, 404; and Euclid, 699. The first frame meeting-house with a spire built on the Reserve was erected in 1817, at Euclid. The township of Euclid was settled by the surveyors under General CLEAVELAND; in 1798 Joseph BURKE and family, and in 1801 Timothy DOANE and family, settled in Euclid.

 

 

 

 

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