97

LAW, GOSPEL, AND EDUCATION

The law and the gospel in their visible forms reached Cleveland at about the same time, in the persons of Samuel Huntington, and the Rev. Joseph Badger. The first named was the earliest lawyer to settle in this city; the latter was the first missionary of importance to follow a line of labor upon the Reserve. We have noted the presence of the Rev. Seth Hart, who came as superintendent of the surveying party of 1797, but beyond his ministrations at the funeral of the drowned David Eldridge, and at Cleveland�s first wedding, there is little to show that he exercised his clerical offices while here.

Samuel Huntington was a protégé and adopted heir of his uncle and namesake, Governor Huntington, of Connecticut. He was a man of education, had traveled in Europe, was married and near thirty-five years of age. He made a tour of portions of the Ohio Country before becoming a resident, and was doubtless so pleased with the promise of the future that he determined to return. Leaving his home in Norwich, Connecticut, he reached Youngstown in July, 1800, and made a tour of the chief settlements of the Reserve on horseback. He kept a daily record of his movements, and the following brief extract therefrom will show how Cleveland appeared to his eyes in the early days of October: "Left David Abbott�s mill (Wil-

loughby) and came to Cleveland. Stayed at Carter�s at night. Explored the city and town; land high and flat, covered with white oak. On the west side of the river is a long, deep stagnant pond of water, which produces fever and ague, among those who settle near the river. There are only three families near the point, and they have the fever.

"Sailed out of the Cuyahoga, along the coast, to explore the land west of the river. Channel at the mouth about five feet deep. On the west side is a prairie, where one hundred tons of hay might be cut each year. A little way back is a ridge, from which the land descends to the lake, affording a prospect indescribably beautiful. In the afternoon went to Williams�s grist and saw-mill (Newburg), which are nearly completed."

Mr. Huntington went south as far as Marietta, on the Ohio, where he made the acquaintance of Governor St. Clair and other gentlemen connected with the territorial government. He returned to Connecticut in the fall, and in accordance with a resolution already formed, removed with his family to Youngstown, early in the summer of 1801. He soon after concluded to make Cleveland his home, and arranged with Amos Spafford for the construction of a house of some pretensions, near the bluff south of Superior street, in rear of the site of the American House. He was accompanied by his wife, and Miss Margaret Cobb, a companion and governess; and two sons, Julius C. and Colbert. It is needless to say that their arrival was welcomed as a notable addition to the little community.

Although Mr. Huntington was the only lawyer in the vicinity, it is not supposed that he garnered an extensive amount of practice, with the county court no nearer than Warren, and very few litigants; with not many questions to quarrel over. He was able to make himself useful in various ways, and we find him occasionally mentioned in the early records of the township. Thus, in 1802, he was elected one of the supervisors of highways�certainly not

an exalted position, but one with many opportunities for usefulness in a new country; in 1807, he was a member of the board of commissioners in charge of that famous lottery (that never came off) for the improvement of the Cuyahoga and Muskingum rivers; while we learn that in 1805 he "abandoned his hewed log house, the most aristocratic residence in Cleveland city, and removed to the mill he had purchases at the falls of Mill Creek"�driven away, probably, by the same malarial causes that had sent so many earlier settlers out to the hills.

A wider field of usefulness was opened before him. Soon after his settlement in Cleveland, the governor appointed him lieutenant colonel of the Trumbull County militia, and in 1802 one of the justices of the quorum, and priority was conceded to him on the bench of Quarter Sessions. He was also, in the same year, elected to the convention to form a State Constitution; was chosen Senator from the county of Trumbull, and on the meeting of the Legislature at Chillicothe was made president of that body. In 1803, he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, his commission, it is said, being the first issued under the authority of the State of Ohio. In 1807, he was elected governor of the State, succeeding Governor Tiffin, who became a Senator of the United States. On the conclusion of his term, Governor Huntington retired to his farm near Painesville, where he remained until his death, in 1817.

It was a characteristic feature of this transplanted New England life and thought that in the pursuit of material things the church and school-house were not forgotten. As a general thing, as soon as the things absolutely essential to physical life were provided, steps were taken for the support of the gospel and the instruction of the young. The missionary was followed by the itinerant minister, and he in turn by the settled pastor, as soon as the strength of the community would permit. The stipend of the latter was of an uncertain quantity and a very indefinite quality, as it came of the commodities of the

day and region, with a very small percentage of cash. In one ancient subscription list, where the people of five townships banded together for the support of a minister, we find the following pledge:

"We do by these presents bind ourselves, our heirs, executors, and administrators firmly, to pay the sums annexed to each of our names, without fraud or delay, for the term of three years, to the Rev. Giles Cowles, the pay to be made in wheat, rye, corn, oats, potatoes, mess-pork, whisky, etc., the produce of farms, as shall be needed by the said Mr. Cowles and family, together with chopping, logging, fencing, etc. We agree, likewise, should any contribute anything within said term of three years toward the support of the said Mr. Cowles, it shall be deducted according to the sum annexed to each man�s name. We likewise agree that the preaching in each town shall be in portion to what each town subscribes for said preaching."

One of the first sermons heard on the Reserve, after its settlement, if not the first, was delivered by the Rev. William Wick, of Washington County, Pennsylvania, who held services at Youngstown, on September 1^st, 1799. The Rev. Joseph Badger was, however, the most prominent of the Protestant missionaries sent into this wilderness, and his services were such as to entitle him to more than a passing mention. He was a native of Massachusetts, where he was born in 1757; enlisted at eighteen in the Revolutionary Army, where he gave a valiant service for three years; entered college in 1781 and graduated in 1785; studied for the ministry, and was licensed to preach in

1786. He occupied a pulpit in Massachusetts for a short period, when he resigned, and accepted a call to go, as a missionary, to the Western Reserve, under the auspices of the Connecticut Missionary Society.

On the 15^th of November, 1800, he mounted his horse, and set out for his far-away field of labor. He passed through Pennsylvania, crossed the Allegheny Mountains in a snow-storm, and reached Pittsburg on December 14^th. After a couple of days of rest, he again pushed on through the woods, and late on a Saturday night reached Youngstown. His first sermon on the Reserve was preached on the Sabbath following to almost the entire population finding shelter in a half-dozen log-cabins of which the town was composed. He soon pushed on to other settlements, visiting Vienna, Hartford, Vernon, Cleveland, and elsewhere in turn. "In this way," says his biographer,⁷⁵ "Rev. Mr. Badger visited, in the course of the year 1801, every settlement and nearly every family throughout the Western Reserve. In doing this, he often rode from five to twenty-five or thirty miles a day, carrying with him in saddle bags a scanty supply of clothing and eatables, and often traversing pathless woodland, amid storms and tempests, swimming unbridged rivers, and suffering from cold and hunger, and at the same time, here and there, visiting lone families, giving them and their children religious instruction and wholesome advice, and preaching at points wherever a few could be gathered together, sometimes in a log-cabin or in a barn, and sometimes in the open field or in a woodland, beneath the shadows of the trees. At about this time he preached the first sermon ever heard in Cleveland."

He was a visitor at this city on the 18^th of August, 1801, and lodged at Lorenzo Carter�s. On the 6^th of September he enters this record: "We swam our horses across the Cuyahoga by means of a canoe, and took an Indian path up the lake; came to Rocky River,

the banks of which were very high, on the west side almost perpendicular. While cutting the brush to open a way for our horses, we were saluted by the song of a large yellow rattlesnake, which we removed out of our way." In the year following, 1802, he again visited Cleveland, and did not receive a favorable impression concerning the religious desires of its people. He says: "Mr. Burke�s family in Euclid, had been in this lone situation for over three years. The woman had been obliged to spin and weave cattle�s hair to make covering for her children�s bed. From thence I went to Cleveland visited the only two families, and went on to Newburg, where I preached on the Sabbath. There were five families here, but no apparent piety. They seemed to glory in their infidelity."

In the fall of 1801, Mr. Badger visited Detroit on horseback, laboring by the way with both white and red as they came across his path. It is not a specially engaging view of the moral condition of the day, when we read his statement that he found no one in all the region whom he could regard as a Christian, "except a black man who appeared pious." On his return he paid a visit to Hudson�a little later the seat of learning of north-eastern Ohio�where he found material from which to organize a church, the membership of which consisted of ten men and six women. To Hudson, therefore, belongs the credit of the first church organization on the Reserve.

In October, he returned to New England, where he made arrangements to return to the west with his family, on a salary of seven dollars per week. On February 23^rd, 1802, he loaded his household effects and family into a wagon drawn by four horses, and started upon his long journey, covering the six hundred miles in sixty days. He decided to make his home in Austinburg, where he purchases a small lot of land and put up a log-cabin. He soon resumed his labors in the field, traveling from point to point as before. A little later a revival season on considerable power was commenced as the result of his min-

istrations. He organized many churches and schools and continued still in the field, although his eastern sponsors reduced his pay to six dollars per week. In 1809, he returned to Connecticut, made a final settlement with the missionary society, and worked no longer under its direction. He came back to the Reserve, and labored as a missionary among the Indians between the Cuyahoga and Detroit; He took an active interest in the

War of 1812, and at the command of General Harrison filled the position of chaplain. He afterwards settled as the pastor of a church at Austinburg; held various charges in other locations, and died at Perrysburg in 1846, at the advanced age of eighty-nine years.

"In personal appearance," to again quote from his biographer, "Rev. Joseph Badger was tall, slim, erect, had blue eyes, brown hair, and a pleasing expression of face. In temperament and action, he was quick and somewhat impulsive, yet he was considerate and slow of utterance, rarely, if ever, uttering an imprudent word. In his social intercourse, he was sedate or facetious, as the occasion seemed to require. He enjoyed hearing and telling amusing anecdotes. In his style of preaching, he was apostolic, plain, simple and logical. In creed he was an orthodox Presbyterian. He had but one grand aim in life, and that was to do what he could to advance the moral and spiritual welfare of mankind. In a word, Rev., Joseph Badger, though dead, still lives and will ever live in memory as the early western missionary whose philanthropic and life-long labors were prompted by the spirit of a true Christian manhood." ⁷⁶

The arrival of Samuel Huntington and Mr. Badger near the same period, and their connection in the beginning

of this chapter as Cleveland�s first bodily exponents of the law and the gospel, recall a reputed experience of each, in illustration of the fact that life and travel in the early days were not without bodily danger. It is told of Mr. Huntington that, while a resident of Cleveland, he came near being devoured by wolves, as he rode in from Painesville, on the Euclid road. He was on horseback, alone, in the dark, and floundering through the swamp near the present corner of Willson and Euclid avenues. A pack of hungry wolves fell upon his trail, and made a combined attack upon horse and man. The former, in desperate fright, made the best possible use of his heels, while the latter laid about him with the only weapon at command�an umbrella. Between speed and defense, both were saved, and brought up in safety at the log-house down near Superior street.

The experience of Mr. Badger was of a similar character. He was urging his faithful horse through the woods of the Grand River bottoms, while the rain was pouring down in torrents, and a place of shelter was one of the uncertain possibilities of the future. There came to him after a time the knowledge that some wild animal was on his trail, and raising his voice, he sent up a shout that would have frightened many of the smaller denizens of the forest. But it had no such effect on the big bear that was on his trail. On the contrary, the brute was aroused to immediate action, and made a rush for the missionary, with hair on end and eyes of fire. The only weapon Mr. Badger had about him, if such it might be called, was a large horseshoe, which he threw at the bear�s nose, and missed. Then he rode under a beech tree, tied his horse

To a branch, deserted the saddle with celerity, and climbed upward. He kept on for a long distance, found a convenient seat, tied himself to the tree with a large bandanna, and awaited results. The bear was meanwhile nosing about the horse, as though preparing for an attack. The wind came up, the thunder rolled, and the rain fell in torrents. The occasional flashes of lightning showed that the horse was still save, with the bear on guard. And there the poor missionary clung all night, cold, wet through, tired and sleepy; and there the bear waited for him to come down. But at daybreak he made for his lair, while Mr. Badger worked his way down as well as he could, and rode for the nearest settlement.

As a matter of historic good faith, it must be admitted that Mr. Badger and others who made note of ungodliness, and more or less of actual evil, on the Reserve, in these early days, were fully justified in all they said. In Cleveland, for instance, they managed to exist until 1816 without a church organization, and possessed no church building until 1829, while constables, and courts, and the machinery for the conduct of civil affairs, made their appearance at a much earlier day. It has become a popular impression that the pioneers of not only the Western Reserve, but of all western sections where New England elements predominated, were pious and God-fearing men, who had little need of courts or the officers of the law. This impression is too often strengthened by those who talk of "the good old times" in a strain that would indicate that all of the early times were good, and nothing but good.

On the other hand, it is a fact that the strong arm of the law was needed in early north-eastern Ohio as elsewhere. There was no lack of hardy virtues of courage, hospitality, comradeship and backwoods chivalry, nor was there an absence of qualities of a less attractive character. The view is well supported by one writer,⁷⁷

who points out the fact that "the first settlers were not generally godly men, such as founded Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, or even Marietta and Granville, Ohio. The men who have created the traditional view of the early history of the Reserve have either been ignorant of the following facts, or they have accorded to them little weight: First, the Reserve was opened to settlement at a time when religion in New England was at a low ebb. Secondly, Old Connecticut did not at first send, as a rule, what she considered her best elements to New Connecticut. At a later day, the character of the emigration improved in respect to religion and morals; but the first emigration was largely made up of men who desired to throw off the heavy trammels of an old and strongly conservative community, where Church and State were closely connected, and where society was dominated by political and religious castes. Still further, the east was at this time swept by an epidemic of land speculation; while the laxative moral influence of a removal from and old and well-ordered society to the woods produced its usual effects."

This view is supported by the comments made by Rev. Dr. Thomas Robbins,⁷⁸ a missionary whose labors upon the Reserve were contemporaneous with those of Mr. Badger. He came to Ohio in 1803, reaching Poland in November, where his first sermon was preached. He traveled all over the Reserve, making notes of his impressions by the way, and describing affairs as they presented themselves to his vision. There is little doubt that his observations were made from an unusually high moral standpoint, and that he saw evil where others might have noted only an absence of religious interest. His language is plain and to the point. There was inattention to spiritual matters everywhere. At Canfield the people "appear very stupid in matter of religion and are not "disposed to attend lectures;

many people held bad principles in religion, and some were much inclined to infidelity." At Warren they "were careless about religious affairs;" and later he adds the surprising statement that "the greater part of the New England people in the country are pretty loose characters."

In Poland they are "pretty stupid in regard to the excellency and spirit of religion;" in Hudson even "the serious people" were "dull and worldly." In Cleveland he found the people "loose in principles and conduct." And "few of them had heard a sermon or a hymn in eighteen months." According to his rigid views, there were few serious persons in Middlefield, in Mesopotamia they are "much included to infidelity:" in Mentor they traded on the Sabbath. It is only fair to assume that in all this Mr. Robbins spoke from an extreme standpoint, and meant simply that all that which was not directly religious needed his condemnation.

The year 1802 was not eventful, so far as the fortunes of Cleveland were concerned. Elisha Norton opened a store in Carter�s house. Mr. Spafford re-surveyed the streets and lanes of the city in November, and "planted fifty-four posts of oak, about one foot square, at the principal corners," for which he charged a half-dollar each, "and fifty cents for grubbing out a tree at the north-east corner of the Square." Local improvements were certainly not progressing at a promising rate. It is a comfort to learn that the health of the people was good.

Among the arrivals was that of Samuel Hamilton and family, who settled in Newburg. Another notable ac-

cession was that of the family of Timothy Doan, a brother of Nathaniel Doan, whose location in Cleveland and subsequent removal to Doan�s Corners has already been recorded. Timothy was a resident of Herkimer County, N. Y., but was "seized with the western fever," as we are told by his son, John Doan.⁷⁹ The family consisted of father, mother and six children�Nancy, Seth, Timothy, Jr., Mary, Deborah and John, who was then but three years old. They traveled with ox teams, and one pair of horses. The father and one son pushed on ahead from Buffalo, by way of Indian trails, carrying a part of the household goods on the backs of horses and oxen, as there were no roads for wagons. "In 1799, a road had been surveyed from the Pennsylvania line to the Cuyahoga River," to quote from the son�s narrative, "but no bridge had been built over the intervening streams. They pushed through to Uncle Nathaniel�s house in East Cleveland, and were soon enjoying their first attack of ague.

The mother and the four children left with her at Buffalo, made the trip by water. She was accompanied by an Indian, and several white men who had been engaged to assist her on the journey. They came in a tow-boat propelled by oars at times, and again by a tow-line carried on the bank. Besides their furniture and household goods, they carried a box of live geese, which were declared to be "the first domesticated birds of the kind ever brought into Ohio." At the mouth of Grand River the boat was overturned, throwing mother, children, good and box overboard. By good fortune the water was shallow, and while the red man carried the children ashore, the white men and Mrs. Doan saved the goods. The geese were carried out into the lake, but becoming in some way freed from their prison, swam ashore, and were recaptured.

At this point, Timothy and Nathaniel met them, and the boat was taken on to Cleveland without further adventure. Mrs. Doan, however, had no further desire for marine traveling, and insisted upon coming overland. "As none of the men could be spared to accompany mother," says the son John, "Uncle Nathaniel came with her. They came on horseback, having two horses, and bringing three children. Polly and Deborah rode with Uncle Nathaniel on one, and mother riding the other carried me. The first clearing we reached was at Mentor, where there were two or three houses. The next break in the woods was at Willoughby, where �Squire Abbott, who had arrived in 1798 and built the first mill in this section, lived. For another six miles we saw no houses. Then we passed the log residence of Joseph Burke, one of the earliest settlers on the Reserve, who had a brother living in Newburg. After traveling nine miles further west, without passing or seeing a single house, we arrived at Uncle Nathaniel Doan�s log-cabin, in April, 1801. It may be considered by some a rather remarkable fact that in the eighty odd years since my advent into East Cleveland, I have always lived within two and a half miles of the spot where Uncle Nathaniel�s house then stood."

Timothy purchases two one hundred and sixty-acre sections of land, for which he paid a little over one dollar an acre. He built a log-house under a hill south of the Euclid road, six miles east of the Public Square, into which they moved in November. "The location," adds the son, "which was in the midst of a large hickory grove, proved very desirable that winter, for we were able to get little but hickory nuts to eat. There was a camp of Indians within forty rods of the house, and my only playmates for several years were Indian papooses. We lived in this lot-cabin about six years, father and the older boys clearing away the timber and raising corn and potatoes among the stumps. The did not plow the ground, but dragged it.

It was in this year 1801 that Cleveland celebrated the Fourth of July with the first grand social gathering it had attempted. It was regarded as a success in all essential features, and was held in Major Carter�s double log-house, on the hill, near the corner of Union and Superior lanes. It is related in the manuscript collections of Judge Barr that John Wood, Ben Wood and R. H. Blin acted as managers. Major Samuel Jones was chief musician and master of ceremonies; while about a dozen ladies and twenty gentlemen constituted the company. "Notwithstnding the floors were of rough puncheons, and their best beverage was made of maple surer, hot water and whisky, probably no celebration of American independence was ever more joyous than this."

The arrival of Timothy Doan�s family in the preceding spring afforded one young man an opportunity of showing his gallantry, by a ride of six miles and back as escort, and has given us a pleasant little picture of the social life of the day. Gilman Bryant, whose father had cut Newburg�s first mill-stones, and set up Cleveland�s earliest whisky still, has described his part in this ball in the statement already quoted: "I waited on Miss Doan, who had just arrived at the Corners, four miles east of town. I was then about seventeen years of age, and Miss Doan about fourteen. I was dressed in the then style�a gingham suit�my hair queued with one and a half yards of black ribbon, about as long and as thick as a corncob, with a little tuft at the lower end; and for the want of pomatum, I had a piece of candle rubbed on my hair, and then as much flour sprinkled on, as could stay without falling off. I had a good wool hat, and a pair of brogans that would help to play �Fisher�s Hornpipe,� or �Hie, Bettie Martin,� when I danced. When I went for Miss Doan I took an old horse; when she was ready I rode up to a stump near the cabin, she mounted the stump, and spread her under petticoat on Old Tib behind me, secured her calico dress to keep it clean, and then mounted on behind me. I had a fine time!"

In 1802, the administration of territorial affairs had so changed that citizens of the townships were permitted to elect their trustees, appraisers, supervisors of highways, fence-viewers, overseers of the poor and constables, by viva voce vote, although the choice of their justices of the peace and militia officers was not yet permitted them. It was ordered, in the February preceding, by the Court of Quarter Sessions that the first town meeting for Cleveland should be held at the house of James Kingsbury. The following is the official report of that gathering:

"Agreeable to order of the Court of General Quarter Sessions, the inhabitants of the town of Cleaveland met at the house of James Kingsbury, Esq., the 5^th day of April, A. D. 1802, for a town meeting, and chose:

"Chairman, Rodolphus Edwards.
"Town Clerk, Nathaniel Doan.
"Trustees, Amos Spafford, Esq., Timothy Doan, Wm. W. Williams.
"Appraisers of Houses, Samuel Hamilton, Elijah Gun.
"Lister, Ebenezer Ayrs.
"Supervisors of Highways, Sam�l Huntington, Esq., Nath�l Doan, Sam�l Hamilton.,
"Overseers of the Poor, William W. Williams, Samuel Huntington, Esq.
"Fence Viewers, Lorenzo Carter, Nathan Chapman.
"Constables, Ezekial Hawley, Richard Craw.
"A true copy of the proceedings of the inhabitants of Cleaveland at their town meeting, examined per me,