Chapter Ten:
Burke
Joseph Burke was Euclid Township's first serious settler, although ultimately only semi-permanent. He came, remained eleven years, and then moved on. But he was Euclid's first. The first to come and stay.
Burke, or Burk, was born on April 27, 1758, in Ware, Massachusetts, west of Boston. Fair haired and light complected, by the time of the American Revolution he had grown to the height of five feet ten inches, moved west to Chesterfield, Massachusetts, (barely 20 miles from Amariah Beard's birthplace in Beckett), taken up farming, and learned to play the drum. These data are recorded in his military record.
In March 1777, not quite yet 19-years-old, he signed up for the first of two three-year enlistments with Massachusetts troops in the Continental Army. He served mostly on the frontier, in the Mohawk Valley, what's now upstate New York, as a drummer. A word on army drummers: they, along with fifers, are iconic images of the American Revolution (see Bedford, Ohio, native Archibald Willard's famous The Spirit of '76, painted in Cleveland). In 18th century armies these musicians provided crucial means of communicating rapidly. The high frequency of the fife and the low frequency of the drum carried over long distances and could be heard above and below the loud and urgent sounds of battle. They were used to transmit orders and other information through an army, and also between enemy armies, such as when a cease-fire or a parley for negotiations was desired. Military musicians tended to be generally too young or too old for combat, and in his late teens and early twenties Burke was an outlier in this respect, so perhaps he was a particularly good drummer, or perhaps with his drumming he was spared for other duties. Many of Burke's relatives were also army drummers and by the end of the war he had risen to Drum Major, the leading musician of the regiment, so one suspects the former.
Burke can be located at Cherry Valley, New York, near Cooperstown between Albany and Syracuse, through all of 1778 under the command of Col. Ichabod Alden, which is interesting. That village and its nearby fort garrisoned by Massachusetts troops were notoriously attacked by British-allied Iroquois supplemented by Loyalist Americans, known as Tories, and some regular British troops on November 11, 1778. The British commander, Butler, had poor control of his forces, and Alden was out of his depth in a frontier command in unfamiliar country. The result was an American defeat followed by the undisciplined slaughter of over a dozen American soldiers, including Alden, and more than twice that many village civilians; many others were carried off by the Natives never to return. The incident became infamous as the Cherry Valley Massacre, and Cherry Valley Township in Ashtabula County, No. 9 in the 2nd Range, is named in commemoration of this event. It was a leading catalyst of the ensuing punitive, scorched earth campaign known as the Sullivan Expedition, ordered personally by George Washington, which, beginning in 1779, decimated and expelled the Iroquois from the lands they'd occupied in present-day western New York State since before the Beaver Wars. Burke was not part of the Sullivan campaign, however. After 1778 he was stationed at a quieter posting further east at Fort Herkimer.
His first enlistment expired in March 1780. What he did in the interim is not known, but he re-enlisted for another three-year term in early 1781. His younger brother Sylvanus joined, also as a drummer, at this time, and he will appear again later in this story. In his second tour Joseph was stationed at West Point—a strategic bend in the Hudson River, the site of Benedict Arnold's treachery and now home of the United States Military Academy—and at an encampment of New York militia near what is now Pompton Lakes, New Jersey known as "York Huts." But Yorktown (no connection) took place in October 1781 and the Treaty of Paris was signed in September 1783 and it doesn't seem Joseph Burke completed the full second three-year term.
Sometime between his last appearance on the muster rolls in February 1782 and the birth of their first child Elizabeth in 1783, Joseph Burke married Chloe Canfield of New Marlborough, Massachusetts, who would have been about 15-years-old at the time. The couple moved to the frontier, deep up the Connecticut River in what became Vermont. It's hard to know exactly where in Vermont they lived, but it seems likely it was either in or near Sandgate, in Bennington County, where records show that Joseph's father, Tilley Tobias Burke, died in 1790. In celebration of Vermont being admitted to the Union in 1791 the Burkes named their fifth child, born about 1792, for its founding hero, Ethan Allen. They had eight children in Vermont between 1783 and 1795 of an ultimate 13, most of whom would come with them to Ohio, before a pause in the late 1790s which is surely significant.
How Joseph Burke found his way to either the Western Reserve in general or to Euclid Township in particular is obscure. In considering Euclid it's impossible to ignore the Moss connection to Vermont and Burke's settling on a tract assigned to John Moss, but the document explicitly describing a connection between them has yet to surface. The sources do indicate that Chloe and their children were part of the project. Crisfield Johnson's History of Cuyahoga County states, "The first permanent settler in Euclid township was Joseph Burke... He was not one of the forty-one employees who made the contract with Gen. Cleaveland in 1796, though he may have belonged to the survey-corps the next year." No listing of Burke is made in the rosters of either the 1796 or 1797 Connecticut Land Company survey parties recorded in Charles Whittlesey’s Early History of Cleveland. However, with the list of the 1797 employees Whittlesey is careful to note that the names included may not be a complete listing, as men were hired and dismissed throughout the season while the work was ongoing. What might have sent Burke on a survey expedition after 14 years in Vermont is not known. But perhaps the pause in the otherwise more or less regularly-spaced births of the Burkes' children in 1795 indicates the onset of hard times. Or perhaps he was just bored, or seeking a profitable opportunity further west.
A note in Whittlesey of the events of 1798 records, "David Abbott, from Fort Stanwix, New York, settled at the Chagrin river [sic], and Joseph Burk [sic] and family in Euclid." The 1879 History of Lorain County offers more detail: "Joseph Burke was the earliest settler in Euclid. He came from New York, in 1798, traveling from Buffalo to Grand river [sic] [present Fairport Harbor] in an open boat. Leaving his family there, he came on to take a look at the wilderness in which he thought of settling, and after making a selection at Euclid, returned for his family."
This is the same time and mode of the Burton settlers of 1798. Perhaps there was mingling of the immigrants at the outpost at Fairport, where both landed. Perhaps there was an encounter with John Moss who introduced Burke to the idea of settling on his smallest lot in Euclid. It's speculation, but certainly possible.
The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript places him. "[Burke] commenced on the East line of the Township on the lot north of and adjoining that of 'Morse' and erected his cabin on the great Ridge Road leading from Buffalo to Cleveland..." This spot would be in the present City of Euclid, on Euclid Avenue, in the vicinity of East 276th Street, on the Lake County border.
"Both families of Burk [more on this in a minute]—the one that settled in Euclid more particularly—suffered much privation in the first year of their pioneer life."
Both the Burkes' outpost and its privation are also noticed in the memoirs of Joseph Badger, a Congregationalist minister from the Connecticut Missionary Society. The Society was founded in 1798 in Hebron, Connecticut, "to Christianize the heathen in North America and to support and promote Christian knowledge in the new settlements within the United States." To that end they recruited missionaries and sent them to frontier settlements in Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut's own Western Reserve. Badger was a veteran of the 1775 Boston campaign and Benedict Arnold's expedition into Canada who survived smallpox in the service, found a calling after the war and studied for ministry at Yale. He joined the Missionary Society and first came to the Western Reserve in the last days of December 1800. For the next several years his family endured tremendous hardship and poverty while he in his religious zeal deposited them in various places and rode and walked back and forth and back again across lakeshore Ohio, from Conneaut to Detroit, preaching anywhere he found even a single person to listen. These included Shawnee Indians on the Maumee and Wyandots on the Sandusky, plus one extraordinary village in what was then Indian Country outside the United States but is now west central Ohio: "At the Upper Sandusky there was a small settlement of black people, to whom I preached frequently. There were seven adults and several children, and one white man, a silver smith whose name was Wright, married to one of the colored women." Badger is a fascinating and under-studied figure who, though not directly part of the Euclid story, appears on its periphery again and again in its first decade and more.
In his memoir Badger records that he visited the Burkes in July 1801, they being the only family yet resident in Euclid Township that summer. It also appears that that same month he proselytized to Amariah and Eunice Moss Beard in Burton:
"On Monday I returned to Aurora, from which I took the only road from the south to the lake [now Route 43, Aurora Road/Miles Avenue]; got very wet in a thunder shower. Arrived at Newburg [sic] before dark. In this place were five families. Preached here on the Sabbath; on Monday visited Cleveland, in which were only two families. Here I fell in company with Judge Kirtland. We rode from here to Painesville; found on the way, in Euclid, one family; and in Chagrin [Willoughby] one; in Mentor four, and in Painesville two families. Next day rode to Burton, preached on the Sabbath and visited the families in this place. From this I found my way to Austinburg. In this place were ten families, and about the same number in Harpersfield. Visited all the families in these settlements, and preached to them three Sabbaths. Thus were visited and the gospel preached to all the families on the Reserve."
A deeper peek into the Burkes' home in Euclid comes from Badger's journal for August 1802:
"Monday [August 2], rode on [west from Painesville] to a small settlement of five families in a place called the 'Marsh,' in Mentor, and preached a lecture, and next day called on Mr. [David] Abbott at Chagrin, who appeared very inimical to the cause of missions, and said he did not thank the Missionary Society for sending missionaries out here. In the course of conversation I observed that it was necessary we should feel ourselves under moral obligations to do right in our treatment of one another. He very spiritedly replied that there was no such thing as moral obligation, that he was bound only by the law of the land. I replied, 'If this be your sentiment, Mr. Abbott, you are not fit to be trusted with any public or private business, for you well know, sir, that you can do injustice and evade the law in thousands of instances.' This pretty much stopped his mouth."
"From this I passed on to Mr. Burke's in Euclid. This family came out with the surveyors, had been in this lone situation over three years. The woman had been obliged to spin and weave cattle's hair to make covering for her children's bed."
There is, as has been said, no record of the Burkes with either of the 1796 or 1797 survey parties, although that could be in error, or Badger could.
He visited the Burkes again late that year in December.
"On Monday, [December 6, 1802,] having crossed Grand River [Fairport] on a shallow rapid, I proceeded on to the Marsh settlement, and from thence to the Chagrin. Here I found the river completely blocked up with ice, and now it was near night. I returned three miles and tarried with a family exceedingly hardened against any religious instruction."
"In the morning I returned to the Chagrin with a determination to follow up the stream until I could get above the block of ice and find some rapid on which I could cross. Having crossed the east branch [Waite Hill] I soon came to shallow water and a low bank, but the ice ran rapidly, and on the opposite side there lay two large trees, having floated down and lodged across the rapid. Supposing I could go round them, up or down, when the ice left an opening, I ventured in, and soon reached the trees, but to my surprise found the water, both above and below, swimming deep for my horse. But it was too cold to swim or be long in the water. I rode along side of one of the trees to the lowest place, got on to it, they lying about six feet apart; took off my portmanteau, and proposed to my horse to jump over. The poor animal was glad to get out of the water; he jumped the log. I then got on again and placed myself on the other log, from which I threw my portmanteau on shore. My horse leaped again, and soon gained the shore. Passing a short distance over a black walnut bottom or intervale, I found myself environed with a high bank, which kept me about an hour before I could find a passage for my horse. I reached Mr. Burke's in Euclid a little before dark, both cold and hungry."
Both Burke and Badger were Revolutionary War veterans and formerly of the frontier between the upper Connecticut and Hudson River Valleys. On the long winter nights they may have had much to talk about.
Perhaps relieving some of that isolation Joseph and Chloe Burke opened their home as an inn. The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript notes, "Mr. Burke soon managed to get a little Whiskey and opened a 'Hotell' [sic], the first between Conneaut and Cleveland..." The 1914 Pioneer Families of Cleveland records, "Their home was known as the Burk Tavern."
And after the pause while they relocated from Vermont to Ohio Joseph and Chloe Burke began having children again, five more, three daughters and two sons: Orrin born in 1799; Chloe, Jr. in 1801; Ira in 1803; Roxanne in 1806; Orpha in 1807; Sophia in 1808. Some sources list Orrin as born in Vermont, so perhaps Joseph went ahead to prepare the homestead and Chloe did not join him until a year or two after, though other sources contradict this. The rest were presumably born in Euclid Township.
Whittlesey notes Burke in 1806 offering his military drumming skills as part of the local militia drills. "They marched and countermarched to the lively roll of Joseph Burke's drum, which he had used in the Revolutionary War..."
And he carried the mail. This gets a bit weedy as both Joseph and his brother Sylvanus had contracts to carry the mail, both Burke brothers had sons whom they each named Gaius (Joseph's Gaius born in 1784 and Sylvanus' Gaius in 1791), and each son Gaius assisted his father with the mail route. And it was not a daily neighborhood walk, but a weeks-long trek through an area comprising several counties today, one still filled with rattlesnakes, bears and large wild cats. Something for younger men, indeed.
Crisfield Johnson offers this portrait:
"The contract for carrying the mail through a wide region was... held by Joseph Burke, of Euclid, whose two sons were the mail carriers... The route was from Cleveland to Hudson, Ravenna, Deerfield, Warren, Mesopotamia, Windsor, Jefferson, Austinburg. Harpersfield, Painesville, and thence back to Cleveland. This was the only route any part of which was in Cuyahoga county [sic], except the main line to the west along the lake shore, and Cleveland [sic] still possessed the only post-office in the county. Mr. Gaius Burke, in a letter on file among the archives of the Historical Society, says that the road was underbrushed most of the way, but there were no bridges, and streams and swamps were numerous. In the summer the two youngsters by turns carried the mail on horseback, but when wet weather came in the spring and fall they had to trudge on foot; the roads being too bad to be traveled on horseback, much less with a wagon. On reaching streams the carrier sometimes crossed in a canoe or on a raft, kept there for the accommodation of travelers. Sometimes he got astride a convenient piece of flood-wood and paddled obliquely to the opposite shore. And sometimes, in default of any of these resources, he waded the stream, or, if it was too deep for that, plunged boldly in and swam across, keeping his little bag of letters above his head as best he might. The population was still extremely sparse; there being spaces five, ten or even fifteen miles in width without a single house."
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In 1801 the Burkes were joined at their Euclid homestead by Joseph's younger brother Sylvanus, his wife Achsah Webster, and eight of their ten children. They had come from Herkimer County, New York, the site of one of Joseph's Revolutionary War postings.
"Setting out from his New York home with his wife and ten children, bestowed in a two-horse wagon, he [Sylvanus Burke] steered his course for Cleveland, and traveled without eventful incident until Erie [Pennsylvania] was reached, when, one of his horses dying, he abandoned the highway, and with all his family save two children—Gaius and a daughter—whom he left in care of Reed, the Erie landlord, he made the rest of the trip via Lake Erie in an open boat. Without tarrying long in Cleveland they proceeded to Euclid..."
Sylvanus and Achsah's son Gaius was 10 in 1801. They had five daughters by then—Irene was 17; Polly seven; Margary five; and Louise an infant—but the source doesn't say which was the one left in Erie. Irene and Gaius were two of the three oldest children and perhaps that was why they were chosen, though this calculation cannot account for 14-year-old brother Orrin between them. Another daughter, Clarissa, would be born in 1802, and perhaps Achsah was already pregnant and that was why they decided to remain in Euclid through the winter. "...in the spring of 1802, they received the two children who had remained at Erie—the little ones having made the journey from that place across the country on horseback, in company with a band of Western travelers."
Having wintered in Euclid and reunited with their absent children, Sylvanus Burke's family continued on to the Cuyahoga and Township No. 6 in the 12th Range:
"Once more complete, the family were soon again on the move, turning toward what is now Independence township [sic], in which they were the first white [sic] settlers, and in which, it may be remarked, they were all prostrated on the same day, soon after their arrival, with fever and ague. This was emphatically a disheartening commencement, but they bore it doubtless with the philosophic resignation common to pioneer days.
"A three-years stay in Independence, however, brought a desire for a change of location, and so, in 1805, they moved to what is now the village of Newburg [sic], where Mr. [Sylvanus] Burk [sic] purchased one hundred acres of land for which he agreed to pay two dollars and a half an acre."
What was then rural Newburgh Township, No. 7 in the 12th Range, just the next one north of Independence, has since been completely swallowed by the City of Cleveland. Sylvanus Burke's farm was located in what is now the Slavic Village neighborhood, and there's a Burke Avenue in the area today. A late 19th century source notes, "Their home was on Broadway, and the Rolling Mills now stand on their farm."
To pay the mortgage on the Newburgh farm Sylvanus Burke, like his brother (perhaps Joseph gave him the idea) undertook to deliver the mail. And like his brother he subcontracted the job out to his sons.
"...Mr. Burk purchased one hundred acres of land for which he agreed to pay two dollars and a half an acre. This payment his two sons, Brazilla B. and Gaius, undertook to make for him by carrying the government mail over the route from Cleveland to Hudson, Deerfield and Ashtabula. Gaius was a lad of fourteen and his brother but a little older, and that they had the spirit to undertake and the courage to fulfil the arduous task is convincing proof that the pioneer boys were composed of the material that made men, and men too of the sort much needed then. Once a week for three years the boys carried the mail afoot, and during their entire term of service faithfully performed every detail of their contract, albeit their journeys were not only laborious and tiresome ones through an almost unbroken wilderness, but were beset moreover with sufficient dangers to appall much older persons."
This boy Brazilla B., often called B.B. Burke, was another Burke family drummer and would follow his father and uncle into that service in the military in the coming War of 1812. ("When an old man, forgetful, and sometimes seemingly oblivious to what was going on about him, a drum put into his hands would arouse him at once, and he would begin drumming Yankee Doodle with the greatest enthusiasm.") Brother Gaius would be horribly injured not long after leaving the mail route behind when he was pinned beneath a falling tree and trapped for hours before being discovered. He lost his leg in the incident, plus the use of his right arm. A physical farming life no longer possible he turned to more sedentary public service. He was first elected constable, then served as county revenue collector, and was eventually elected the second Cuyahoga County Treasurer. Despite being the tax man he was evidently very popular.
Sylvanus and Achsah Webster Burke, briefly of Euclid, their sons Brazilla and Gaius, and their wives as well, all rest today in the Harvard Grove Cemetery in Cleveland's Slavic Village, old Newburgh Township.
*
Following General Wayne's conquest of the Northwest, the 1795 Treaty of Greenville established the boundary between the United States and lands reserved for the Native tribes of Ohio north of the 41st parallel at the Cuyahoga River, leaving the western portion of the Connecticut Reserve in legal limbo for a decade. A new treaty finalized in 1805 near, or perhaps within the boundaries of, present-day Toledo at the now lost Fort Industry, somewhere on the Maumee, modified the terms of the Greenville Treaty and pushed the Native line back to 120 miles west of the Pennsylvania border, not coincidentally matching the defined boundaries of the Western Reserve. This opened the possibility of settlement west of the Cuyahoga to a new wave of Western settlers and Eastern investors.
Anticipating the resolution of the Indian claim several of the same Connecticut investors who had bought and sold Burton Township—William Law, and Benjamin and Samuel Doolittle, notably—embarked on a new venture to sell and settle newly opened portions of the Reserve.
The 1879 History of Lorain County:
"Prior to the apportionment by draft of that part of the Reserve lying west of the Cuyahoga river, Levi Bronson, Azor Bronson, Harmon Bronson, Calvin Hoadley, Jared Pritchard, and some fifteen others, formed an association called the 'Waterbury Land Company.' This company, together with William Law, Benjamin Doolittle, Jr., and Samuel Doolittle, drew at the fourth draft, April 4, 1807... township... number five, range fifteen... The draft was in the following proportions: to the Waterbury Land Company, twenty one thousand six hundred dollars; William Law, two thousand eight hundred and fifteen dollars; Benjamin Doolittle, Jr., one thousand five hundred and ninety-two dollars; Samuel Doolittle, eighty dollars. The deed was executed on the 28th day of May 1807 by John Caldwell, John Morgan, and Jonathan Brace, for the Connecticut Land Company, to Levi Bronson, Calvin Hoadley, Jared Pritchard, Azor Bronson and Harmon Bronson, in trust for the Waterbury Land Company. Pending the negotiation for the extinguishment of the Indian claim to the lands west of the Cuyahoga, the company bought of William Edwards a thousand acres of land in tract two, town eight, range eleven, Euclid... and a number settled there the summer previous to the draft."
That township, No. 5 in the 15th Range, is the easternmost in what is now Lorain County, and it would be named Columbia.
Telling the tale of Joseph Burke will require some jumping ahead a little in the tale of Euclid Township, and more will be said about the tracts system shortly. But for the sake of this narrative know that Tract 2 of Euclid Township was a 960 acre parcel which today comprises more or less the entire southwest quarter of South Euclid, Ohio. The thousand acres mentioned seems to be a rounding up of its 960, but it appears the group acquired the entire tract. The William Edwards mentioned is a bit of a mystery. He does not appear to have been related to the Edwardses, Rufus and Rodolphus, associated with the Burton settlement, nor to Connecticut Land Company shareholder Pierpont Edwards, and early maps of Tract 2 show it in the hands of Josiah Barber.
Azor, Daniel, Levi and Bela Bronson were brothers from Waterbury, Connecticut whose names would all become associated with either Columbia or Euclid or both. One of the earliest histories of Euclid township lists Levi and Daniel Bronson settling in Euclid in 1805. But since Levi was one of the Waterbury Land Company investors and subsequent records show he spent most of his remaining life in Columbia, it looks like he was just passing through Euclid. He may have been among the temporary settlers on Tract 2. Daniel Bronson appears in Columbia in 1819, but returned to Euclid by the 1820s before moving on to Michigan.
Calvin Hoadley's brother Samuel appears in the same early history of Euclid Township as a settler around 1805, but considering this evidence perhaps the Hoadleys were just passing through Euclid as well.
Jared Pritchard's is an interesting name to find on this list, as he was married to Anna Beard, who was the sister of the David Beard, the surveyor of the Turhand Kirtland and William Law party of 1798.
"The summer previous to the draft" was in 1806. If a large group of transient settlers appeared in Euclid Township in 1806 with plans to homestead west of the Cuyahoga just as soon as the Indian claims could be extinguished, this may have been when and how Joseph Burke heard of and became persuaded to join the Columbia project.
*
The History of Lorain County:
"In the summer of 1807 [Columbia T]ownship was surveyed. A surveyor by the name of Lacey was first employed, but his chain was found to be of an incorrect length and he was discharged. In August of that same year Robert Worden, a surveyor from Columbiana county [sic], was engaged, who, with Levi Bronson, Daniel Bronson, Benoni Adams, and Elias Frost of Euclid as ax [sic] and chain men, set out from Cleveland, taking a southwest course until the northeast corner of the town was reached. From this point they proceeded west two and a half miles, thence south a like distance to the center of the township. The party made their encampment here, on the west bank of Rocky river [sic]."
Benoni Adams' father John settled in Euclid in 1808. Perhaps the son hoped for a homestead of his own west of the river. Perhaps the father took over a plot in Euclid first prepared by the son. Elias Frost would be associated with both Euclid and Columbia only briefly before becoming a principal founder of Olmsted Township.
It's tempting to assume that surveyor Worden's home in Columbiana County was the inspiration for the name of Columbia Township. But it was actually for Columbia, Connecticut, just one of many place names in the United States, not least of which the state capital of Ohio, which honor Christopher Columbus.
The History of Lorain County, again:
"In September, 1807, a company numbering thirty-three persons, left Waterbury, Connecticut, for [Columbia T]ownship. They were: Calvin Hoadley, wife and five children; Lemuel Hoadley, wife and three children, [plus?] his father and his wife's mother; Silas Hoadley and Chauncey Warner; Bela Bronson, his wife and one child; John Williams, wife and five children; Lathrop Seymour and wife; Mrs. Parker and four children..."
The Columbia settlers proceeded along the same route west as had the Burton settlers, John Moss, Amariah Beard's family, and even Joseph Burke a decade earlier. They were two months in reaching the Lake Erie shore at Buffalo. There was still no road into the Western Reserve and the usual procedure would be by water. But the lake in November looked risky and the Columbia Waterbury party divided as to the best next course. Most opted for the much more arduous but seemingly safer land route. But four families of the immigrants chose to risk the water. It was a bad decision. They suffered not one, not two, but three literal setbacks, and their expected journey of a few days took the better part of a month.
"The little [lake] party set sail under a bright sky and with a favoring breeze, but not long afterward encountered one of those sudden gales common at that time of year, which carried them back a distance of several miles, where the vessel went ashore. A week was spent before another start could be made. Arriving in sight of Presque Isle [Erie, Pennsylvania.] the vessel was again struck by a contrary wind and driven back to a point on the Canada shore under which the voyagers took shelter. They remained there two weeks for a favorable wind, when the journey was resumed. They proceeded without further reverses until within sight of Cleveland, then a pretentious place of three log cabins, when a violent wind struck their craft and they were forced to retreat until near the site of the present city of Erie, where they went ashore. They were now thoroughly discouraged with their experience by lake. The season was growing late, and whether to make another attempt by water or undertake the long journey by land on foot was not a pleasant alternative. Calvin Hoadley determined to make another trial, and, with his family, arrived at Cleveland after encountering many experiences similar to those we have mentioned."
"From Cleaveland Hoadley sent back help via land, and the remnants of the Columbia settlers were found and shepherded safely to Cleaveland. After the difficulty of the journey most of the party chose to stay the winter there..."
"...with the exception of Bela Bronson and family, who, with ox-team and sled, pushed on towards Columbia. They were accompanied by Levi Bronson, Jared Pritchard, John Williams, Silas Hoadley, Calvin Hoadley, and five or six others who went ahead and cut a road for them. The family brought along in the sled cooking utensils—with which Mrs. Bronson prepared the food for the company—and camp equipage. Their progress was, of course, slow, eight days being consumed in reaching Columbia. Two days subsequently—on the 7th day of December, 1807—they arrived."
Thus, painfully, was Columbia Township first settled. Those who stayed the winter in Cleaveland joined them in the spring.
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The anonymous circa 1850 "History of Euclid" manuscript records, "[Joseph Burke] continued in [Euclid] Township some ten years [sic], when he exchanged his place for one in the Town of Columbia, Lorain County..." And the 1879 History of Lorain County says, "In 1809, Roswell Scovil, Horace Gunn, Timothy Doan[, Jr.], Daniel Bunnell, Zephaniah Potter, Wm. Hoadley, Noah Warner, Marcus Terrell, and Joseph Burke joined the [Columbia] settlement."
By 1810 Joseph Burke was already over 50, getting on for an American man of that era. Nonetheless, when a militia was formed of men from Columbia, Ridgeville, Eaton and Middleburg Townships, he signed up, along with his by then adult sons Ethan Allen and Silas, both born back in Vermont, plus Hoadleys, Bronsons, Elias Frost, Jared Pritchard, Lathrop Seymour, Timothy Doan, Benoni Adams and Chauncey Warner, and several others. "After the selection of the 'old soldiers' as corporals, young Eli Hickox stepped up and said: 'I'll be the fourth to carry the jug for the old men,' and was thereupon elected fourth corporal. Joseph Burke was drummer; Marshall Culver and Zephaniah Potter fifers."
Two stories of Burke's life in Columbia are preserved, one merely obnoxious, the other quite sad. Both are found in the History of Lorain County.
The obnoxious one involves one of Burke's old Euclid neighbors:
"Benoni Adams, while in search of some cattle, spied Joseph Burke as he was getting over a brush fence some distance from him, and it occurred to Adams to have a little sport. Evidences of Indians in the immediate vicinity had recently been seen, and, when Adams gave a shout in imitation of the Indian's war whoop, Burke darted off like a deer for his house. Adams, seeing his fright, and fearing the consequences of his Joke, called after him to stop, but that only frightened Burke the more. Arriving at his house, he apprised his family of their danger, and, with their youngest child in his arms, Mrs. Burke following with the rest, set out for the fort, Burke yelling 'Indians!' all the way. The alarm spread rapidly, and many ludicrous scenes were enacted."
In addition to outing Benoni Adams as a jerk, the anecdote relates that the Columbia settlement featured some kind of fort, perhaps just a simple blockhouse, but those were fairly common in the early years of White settlement in Ohio. Euclid may have had one as well.
The sad story involves their daughter Orpha, born in Euclid in 1807:
"A little daughter, four years of age, while in the woods with her brother, who was making maple sugar, wandered away and was never found. The generally accepted theory as to her fate is that she was carried away by Indians seen in the vicinity a day or two previous."
This incident took place in 1811, the fact worked out from the passage above and Orpha Burke's age at her recorded date of death. It's hard to say for sure who the brother was, but he could have been Ira, born 1803 in Euclid. It could have been Natives. It could have been any number of large wild animals, in 1811 still more the masters of New Connecticut than any of the Americans there struggling to civilize it. Or she could have just gotten lost in the ancient forest and never been found. No answer to the mystery is happy.
Most people don't usually think of Greater Cleveland as ever having been the West, or any kind of an untamed frontier. But it surely was. Pitilessly, it devoured lives.
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Joseph Burke's own story also ended abruptly.
Telling it requires some more jumping ahead a little, this time in the tale of the United States, and much more will be said about the War of 1812 shortly. But for the sake of this narrative know that in his mid-50s Joseph Burke's militia unit was deployed to fight the British in western Ohio and around Detroit. As a younger man in a previous war with this old enemy Burke had held up well enough through long years of service, but his constitution or perhaps merely his luck gave out and he took ill. Before the 20th century disease killed far more soldiers in every army than any enemy did.
"...when war was declared against Great Britain in 1812 Mr. Burke true to his early habits again volunteered his services to sustain the stars and stripes of his Country's Banner on the North Western frontier—and in June 1814 he with some others that were sick were landed at Cleveland. His son came and took him home to Columbia on an ox sled where he survived but a few days..."
And so Joseph Burke, Euclid Township's first real settler, died, in the service, in Columbia Township, Lorain County, on the Fourth of July, 1814. He's buried in the Columbia Center Cemetery above the west bank of the Rocky River on West River Road.
*
Chloe remained in Columbia with several of their children following Joseph's death. In 1818 she and her sons Ethan Allen and Orrin founded the township's Methodist church in their home. In 1820 she remarried, to local widower Adam Overacker, or Overacher, the ceremony officiated by Adam's son Michael, who was a Justice of the Peace and himself one of the founders of Mayfield Township, just east of the southern portion of Euclid. Chloe and Adam had no children together and stayed in Columbia several years before deciding to move to join some of Adam's children from his first marriage in Michigan. However Chloe died just shortly after this move, in Washington, Michigan, north of Detroit, on August 12, 1833. The location of her burial is unknown.
*
The Columbia connections to Euclid vis a vis Joseph Burke have been underappreciated in the tellings of its history, just as have Burton's vis a vis John Moss.
The Pioneer Families of Cleveland contains a brief if effusive sketch of the Burkes in Euclid. Written more than a century after the fact it must be taken with a large grain of salt:
"They were typical New England people, pious, frugal, industrious, making the best of conditions, and finally overcoming them, the kindest of neighbors, and each one of them thoroughly reliable."
Effusive. A grain of salt, surely. But there's nothing really to be found to contradict it.
The Information in Chapter Ten is drawn from the following sources:
"Adam Overacker, Revolutionary War Soldier" The Historical Marker Database website. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=140651
"History of Euclid." MSS 1, Container 69, Folder 161, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
Badger, Joseph. A Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger, Containing an Autobiography and Selections from his Private Journal and Correspondence. Sawyer, Ingersoll and Co. 1851.
Cozad, Andrew. "East Cleveland, Account of its history by Andrew Cozad, undated." Series V: Writings, Subseries C: Other Towns, Roll 5, Folder 160, Cabinet 54, Drawer 2. WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
History of Lorain County Ohio, with Illustrations & Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Williams Brothers, 1879.
Hummer, John. "Patriot gets his due." Brooklyn (Michigan) Exponent, Oct 9, 2019. http://theexponent.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/A-Section-1-8.pdf.
Johnson, Crisfield. History of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. D.W. Ensign & Co., 1879.
Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War. Wright & Potter, 1896.
United States Army Fife and Drum Corps website. https://www.fifeanddrum.army.mil.
Whittlesey, Charles. Early History of Cleveland, Ohio. Fairbanks, Benedict and Co., 1867.
Wickham, Gertrude Van Rensselaer. The Pioneer Families of Cleveland 1796-1840, Under the Auspices of the Woman's Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission, 1896. Evangelical Publishing House, 1914.
Genealogy websites:
ancestry.com
familysearch.org
findagrave.com
geni.com
myheritage.com
