Chapter Eleven:
Doan
Nathaniel Doan was Moses Cleaveland's blacksmith. For the Connecticut Land Company's first two seasons on the Reserve he kept shoes on the packhorses, an essential member of the team. "Mr. Doan appears to have been an useful smith, and a good citizen." He's not Euclid Township's Doan. But he's the anchor.
The Doans came from coastal Connecticut. They were a seafaring family, ship building and sailing out of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. Nathaniel, born in 1762, was just slightly young for the Revolution. His father, Seth Doan, Sr., and his oldest brother, Seth, Jr., however, were not.
Early in the war the two Seth Doans were both serving on what was purported to be a merchant ship, of which Seth, Sr. was the mate, or first officer. Whether they were in fact an innocent merchantman engaged in legal commerce, or smuggling or otherwise supporting the rebellion, is open to conjecture. But the British decided they were on the wrong side of things, captured the ship and took the men into custody.
They were taken to occupied New York and cast into the belly of the HMS Jersey, a prison ship moored in the mud flats of Wallabout Bay, present site of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard. The prison ships of the American Revolution were notorious death pits. Derelicts which otherwise would have been sunk or scrapped, these hulks performed one last duty as portable pens for Britain's enemies. Overcrowded, filled with vermin and disease, the neglected and starving men packed inside them died in droves. For years as the war ground on their bodies were buried in shallow graves in the sand of the nearby Brooklyn shore by details of weakened prisoners. Decades after, the bones of these men were still being routinely found. Eventually they were gathered, and the remains interred with honor beneath the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. But their transformation from criminal rebels to national heroes was a long way off, and the task for the men aboard the Jersey was simply to survive.
The 1884 History of Middlesex County, Connecticut:
"In the latter part of the year 1776, a number of men... who had been kept as prisoners in the Jersey prison ship at New York were released by exchange. They were told that their last meal before they went should be a good one. Savoury [sic] soup was set before them, and they all partook of it, except one of two brothers named Doane, from Middle Haddam Landing, who did not like onions, with which it was flavored, and who returned comparatively well. Of those who ate, all died, either on the way home, or soon after arrival, evidently the result of some slow poison introduced with their food. Jesse Swaddle died in December, on the journey home. John Smith and John Snow, having crawled as far as Milford, there died in January 1777. Joseph Arnold also expired before reaching home, January 3d 1777. Seth Doane jr. [sic] and Elisha Taylor jr. [sic] only reached their homes to lie down and die."
The writer seems to have Seth Doan Senior and Junior confused for brothers. But there are no other sources referring to Doan brothers held aboard the Jersey and several referring to the father and son. At any rate, according to the tale, Seth, Jr. ate the soup. His father, not liking onions, declined. Maybe it was poison. Maybe it was just bad. They made it home to Middle Haddam, and Seth, Jr. died on January 30, 1777, barely 19.
If Seth Doan, Sr. wasn't in fact committed to the American cause before surviving the prison ships and losing his first son to British neglect and cruelty, he was after. Records show a letter of marque—essentially a license for legalized, weaponized piracy—issued him by the Continental Congress on December 16, 1778, as master of the Connecticut privateer Harlequin, a six-gun sloop—a relatively small vessel with just a single mast—bearing 20-25 men. Seth Doan's command of Harlequin may have been only an interim appointment. He looks to have served as her captain just about six months, between the longer tenure of David Brooks, through 1778, and the final one of his brother, Samuel Brooks. Nevertheless, Doan's command of Harlequin was a productive tour—extremely productive when one considers how short it was. "Doane sailed for the West Indies where he captured a sloop with coffee, cocoa and some slaves." Five months after Doan relinquished command, in late 1779, Harlequin under Samuel Brooks was itself captured by the British and taken into New York.
A detailed description of one engagement featuring Seth Doan, Sr. can be found in the History of Middlesex County, the action taking place off Point Judith, Rhode Island, a strategic point commanding the entrance to Long Island Sound:
"Aside from the regular sea voyages of the privateers, there were suddenly planned and executed sortie-like adventures along the coast, prominent among which were several to Long Island for the capture of goods stored by the enemy, or persons high in rank for exchange, and, also, in watching the approach of the enemy's ships into the Sound, by the eastern route, with the intention of capturing such as they could.
"Among the latter was the affair off Point Judith, in the State of Rhode Island, and near the Connecticut line... in which many of the men of Middle Haddam Society were engaged.
"They organized into six boat crews, consisting of from eight to ten men each. The boats were of the whale boat pattern, the stern constructed like the bow. A swivel [gun: a small, hand-aimed cannon] was mounted in the bow of each and the crews were properly officered. Among the several boat commanders were: Capt. Samuel Brooks, of Haddam Neck; Capts. Joshua Griffith, Seth Doane and Abner Stocking of... Chatham... and Capt. Sage, of Middletown.
"Arriving at Point Judith they hauled up their boats in a sheltered bay near by, where they encamped. A constant watch was kept from an eminence for the approach of the enemy's ships. One morning soon after their arrival, the camp was excited over the news of a strange sail seen in the offing, whose appearance was soon generally discussed. The rigging, some said, was like a man-of-war, others that her hull was like a merchantman. The conclusion being in favor of the latter, and to risk an attack, they were soon ready.
"As the ship drew near the boats put out from around the Point, advanced in succession to the rear, and fired their swivels in rapid rotation into the stern of the supposed merchantman, and retired to load and again take their turns in the attack.
"When the last had fired the ship wore around, raised a tarpaulin covering from her sides, and, greatly to their surprise, disclosed a man-of-war with two rows of port-holes from which issued a broadside, harmless in effect, as the sea was high and they were so near the balls passed over their heads.
"The attacking boats hastily withdrew, passed around the Point into the bay and out of range with such speed that the boat commanded by Captain Brooks on striking the shore ended over and permanently lamed Elijah Abell, one of its crew... The other boats, coming in on top of a wave, were landed high on the shore. Unsatisfied, they mounted two of the swivels on the rocks and replied with vigor to the continued broadsides of the enemy. An artillery company happening in the neighborhood, and, hearing the melee, hastened down, and took a part in the engagement until the ship proceeded on her way.
"Although no prize was taken, no lives were lost. A prisoner on board of the ship at the time told them, after his release, that a ball from one of the boats passed through a closet in the captain's cabin and broke every dish there, and another ball struck the mizzen mast and passed half through it; that the captain was highly enraged, and said: 'It was the most audacious proceeding he ever heard of, and if he could catch those fellows he would hang every one of them from his yardarm.'"
*
The next oldest Doan son was Seth's second, Nathaniel's other older brother, Timothy. Born in 1759 in Middle Haddam, Timothy served in the Revolution as well, according to the same History of Middlesex County from which the details of his father's and older brother's service are recorded, though no information beyond listing his name among the men serving is provided in that book.
His original, weathering grave in Cleveland, Ohio, is augmented by one of the familiar white headstones provided by the federal government to mark the resting places of America's war veterans. It shows his name,—with the original final "e" spelling—lists his date of death, and describes his service as "COL WILLIAM SHEPARD'S REGT MASS MILITIA REV WAR." William Shepard from Westfield, Massachusetts, commanded the 4th Massachusetts Regiment which was engaged in most of the most famous Revolutionary War battles of the Eastern theater, from Bunker Hill to Long Island, to Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, Monmouth and finally Yorktown. Wareham Shepard of both 1796 and 1797 Connecticut Land Company expeditions to the Western Reserve, and William Shepard, Jr. of 1797, were his sons. Nathaniel Doan was a member of both of these expeditions and surely would have known them, but perhaps it was actually Timothy's connection to the Shepard family from the war and their later involvement with the Connecticut Land Company which drew Nathaniel into the project and thus ultimately brought the Doans to Ohio.
Timothy would have been around sixteen at war's start, slightly young but by no means out of the question for military service in that time period. Why he would serve in a Massachusetts regiment rather than one from Connecticut is something to be asked. Also, why he would choose to serve with land forces rather than at sea given his family's background and what is known about his later life is a bit of a mystery, although considering his father's and older brother's experiences perhaps it's no mystery at all. If he had participated in all these famous and important battles why do the sources on him not have more to say about them? Sadly, very little about Timothy Doan's part in the Revolution can be stated confidently.
More—though not a lot more—is recorded regarding his civilian maritime career following the war:
"Timothy Doane Esqr.,... [was] a Sea Captain, who formerly sailed out of Connecticut River..."
"In early life he adopted the calling of a sailor, which he followed nineteen years, a part of that time being the captain of a merchantman."
In 1783 he married Mary Cary of Queens County, Long Island, New York, now the Queens borough of New York City, but then quite pastoral and rural. They lived in Connecticut and had several children by 1796, not all of whom survived to adulthood. One who did, though, was their first son, born in 1785, whom they named Seth, to honor Timothy's lost older brother.
"...by the time he was 30 years of age [Timothy Doan] owned his vessel, and carried his own cargoes between this country and the West Indies."
However:
"... in 1796 or 7... Timothy Doane gave up the sea..."
"Capt. [Timothy] Doane left the Ocean..." "His last voyage... was a disastrous one, for he suffered shipwreck and lost his boat and the load of sugar and molasses with which it was freighted."
"When he returned to his wife and home with the news that he had lost nearly all his worldly possessions, she received it calmly, and assured him that she would much rather have him home penniless and in safety than to endure the life of loneliness and anxiety she had led while he was away and prosperous."
It was either a particularly disastrous wreck, or perhaps he had been looking for a way out of the business anyway, because Timothy Doan, already in his mid-30s, left the trade which had been his father's and his martyred brother's and which he had pursued his entire adult life. It was clearly a big decision.
*
Changing careers, Timothy Doan also abandoned Connecticut, ultimately, though he may not have realized it then, forever.
"...with little more than a family, consisting of a Wife, four Children, Waggon [sic] and two yoke of Oxen and some small amount of household stuff..." he "...made his way west into the Wildness of the State of New York, and took him up a lot of land... where he made a beginning where he resided four years..."
Many sources place Timothy Doan and family during this period in Herkimer County, New York, in the Mohawk River Valley west of Oneida Lake and Lake Ontario. One source mentions "Whitstown," and another suggests he was near Utica, and there is a Whitestown, New York, just adjacent to present-day Utica, though it's in Oneida and not Herkimer County, though Herkimer is just next door. Safe to say the Timothy Doans were in the area of Utica, New York "... where he engaged in farming."
*
Meanwhile, younger brother Nathaniel had also started a family, and by the mid-1790s was also turning his eyes west. He had married Sarah Adams in 1785, and they would have 11 children together, though, sadly, again, not all would survive to adulthood.
The U.S. Army's conquest of the Northwest Territory in 1794 and the subsequent Treaty of Greenville opened the lands Connecticut had long claimed on the south shore of Lake Erie to permanent American settlers. This spurred the formation of the Connecticut Land Company in 1795 which presented an opportunity to 34-year-old Nathaniel Doan for work.
In 1796 he participated in the initial Connecticut Land Company expedition under Moses Cleaveland as the party's blacksmith. The position involved not only routine shoeing, but the repair and maintenance of the expedition's metal tools and equipment, and also generally caring for the vital horses themselves. This would have made him at least a little more crucial to the expedition's success than the extremely tough and hardworking but otherwise unskilled axe- and chain-men. How and when, even why, Nathaniel Doan acquired this trade is not recorded in the sources on the family.
He was counted among the 41 employees of the 1796 crew who struck and in settlement were offered the opportunity to acquire cheap lots in Township No. 8 in the 11th Range, later called Euclid, the subject of this essay. How active he was in what was characterized as the mutiny is not known. His drawings weren't especially good—none were on the strategic headland or along the lakeshore trail which became Euclid Avenue. He drew Lake Lot 33, at what's now the north central end of the City of Euclid; Gore Lot 38, pretty close to but not contiguous with his lake lot, in the northeast of Euclid; First Draft Lot 38 in what is now Lyndhurst—probably his best draw, with a stretch of the trail which would become Mayfield Road, but way in the interior corner of the township that would remain sparsely populated and travelled even into the 20th century; plus Second Draft Lot 53 in what's now the north end of Cleveland Heights. But Nathaniel Doan would parlay these mediocre drawings extremely well.
He returned to the East in the fall and the next season came back to the Reserve with the second expedition. Joining him in 1797 was his and Timothy's younger brother, John Doan, age 23, as well as an apprentice named Peleg Washburn. Nathaniel Doan was one of only a few men to participate in both of the first two Connecticut Land Company expeditions; even Moses Cleaveland never returned to Ohio. Poor Washburn died of dysentery during the expedition, on August 6, 1797, and he rests today in Downtown Cleveland in the Erie Street Cemetery on East 9th Street. Sickness dogged just about all of the first Americans to venture to work and live in the Western Reserve and it would loom over all of Nathaniel Doan's efforts there.
Nathaniel Doan's services to the Company must have proven satisfactory. With the initial surveys complete the first drops of what would become a flood of settlers were about to drip starting with the coming of spring in 1798. A smith for the colony was certainly needed, and "...the directors and stockholders gave a city lot to Nathaniel Doan... on condition that he should reside and keep up a blacksmith shop upon it." And so the decision was made that the entire Nathaniel Doan family—wife Sarah, son Job, and three daughters, Sarah, Jr., Delia, and Mercy—would all emigrate to New Connecticut.
*
The Nathaniel Doans set out from Chatham, Connecticut, in the spring of 1798. They travelled down the Connecticut River to Long Island Sound, along the coast to New York, up the Hudson to Troy, then west through the Mohawk Valley. They passed through brother Timothy's still fairly new farm near Utica where he'd been perhaps only a year or two, and there they added another family member to their party.
Nathaniel's nephew and Timothy's son, Seth Doan, III was 13-years-old at the time and already itching to strike out on his own. He had been making noises about taking up a career at sea like his patriotic grandfather, but it was a life which had already proved disastrous for his father and ultimately fatal for the late uncle for whom he had been named. It was his parents' wish to turn him away from this idea, so they agreed to place him under the care of his uncle Nathaniel's household bound for the Northwest Territory. With Seth, III added the party proceeded on to the shore of Lake Ontario, around Niagara Falls to Lake Erie, and then on down the coast.
On the journey every member of the party fell ill. "[Nathaniel] Doan's family was attacked on the way, and were obliged to stop at Mentor..."
Their illness was described as "fever and ague, or bilious fever." Fever remains with us to this day and is familiar to most. Ague is a term not encountered much any more, but it refers to fits of shivering. Bilious fever is another archaic malady associated with jaundice or yellowing of the skin. All three of these symptoms point to a more modern diagnosis: malaria.
This parasitic infection of the blood is introduced by biting mosquitoes. Pest control and modern treatments today make this disease one more common to tropical regions, but it can flourish anywhere mosquitoes are unchecked and find favorable breeding conditions. Before White settlement in what became Northeast Ohio, wave action building sandbars, and even beavers making their dams, choked the mouths of many of the creeks and streams which feed Lake Erie, backing up their waters and making huge sections of the lake plain pestilential swamps. This would have been the case all the way up the coast to Niagara. Clearing the mouths of streams was often one of the first tasks the settlers undertook.
Exactly how long the Nathaniel Doans were delayed in their illness at Mentor isn't clear from the sources, but they turned their boat into the mouth of the Cuyahoga and struggled ashore at Settlers' Landing three months after leaving Connecticut, perhaps twice the time a similar journey normally took.
*
Cleveland at its population peak during World War II would be home to nearly a million people. The Nathaniel Doans arrived there in the summer of 1798 to find fewer than half a dozen families, all miserable, most actively making arrangements to abandon the forsaken place.
Job Stiles and his wife Talitha Cumi Elderkin ("Little girl, I say unto thee, arise!" Mark 5:41. Had she come near death as a newborn and finally named in gratitude for her deliverance? One suspects there's a story there), had come with the first Connecticut Land Company expedition in charge of the Company's supplies, their rough home serving as a depot and they as quartermasters. Not only was Talitha Cumi Stiles one of only two women (a woman aged 15 in 1796) with the first expedition—enough to get her into any history of Northeast Ohio—but when the party returned east in the fall the Stileses remained—alone, for the winter—and thus claimed the title as the first settlers of Cleaveland. Yet just two years later they had had it, and had left for the heights in the township to the south, No. 7 in the 12th Range, what would soon be called Newburgh. Eventually the Stileses would give up the Western Reserve entirely and go back east.
James Kingsbury had established an entrepot on the edge of the Western Reserve at Conneaut Creek in 1796, then moved to the Cuyahoga the following year. He went to Newburgh.
Lorenzo Carter and his brother-in-law Ezekiel Hawley—or Holley, or Holly—also both came in 1797. Hawley would go to Newburgh. Carter would stay—his house was near the shore and the lake breeze kept the mosquitoes down—and thus usurp the Stileses as Cleaveland's first permanent settler.
Rodolphus Edwards had only just arrived a few weeks earlier with Turhand Kirtland's Burton party. John Moss had been there, and was doubtless around that summer. Edwards would soon figure out he'd chosen a poor place for his cabin by the river and at least move to the top of the hill.
Forty years after the fact Seth Doan, III described the scene they found, and the settlement's isolation. Bank Street is now West 3rd; Water Street now West 9th.
"When we arrived there were three or four clearings of about two acres each. One between Water Street and the bluff, just north of St. Clair Street; another near Stiles' house, on Bank Street, and one near Hawley's at the end of Superior Street..."
"They had occasional communications with Detroit, through straggling Frenchmen and Indians. There was, as yet, no settlement at Buffalo or Black Rock, nor any between Cleveland [sic] and the Ohio River, the one at Presque Isle, or Erie, being the nearest."
The Nathaniel Doans moved into the cabin the Stileses had abandoned, which stood at what is now the corner of West 3rd and Superior, off Public Square on the edge of what's now the Warehouse District.
"...[the Nathaniel Doan family] was scarcely settled in the little log-cabin before every member of it was taken ill..."
It was likely the same complaint which had felled them at Mentor, and probably they pushed on through without having fully recovered in order to finally reach their destination, only to collapse again upon their arrival.
Indeed, "In the latter part of the summer and all the fall [of 1798] every person in the colony [of Cleaveland] was at some time sick..."
"There was no physician to prescribe, and few medicines. In the place of calomel, they used an infusion of Butternut bark, and for quinine and Peruvian bark, they substituted dog wood and cherry..."
"To add to the family's distress, there was little food to be obtained in the settlement, and it suffered hunger for weeks at a time..."
Cleaveland was not yet equipped for the agriculture and with the associated infrastructure it needed to be self-supporting. A relief party was dispatched to the nearest mill at Erie, 100 miles up the lakeshore. This effort met disaster, and at Euclid, no less.
"About the middle of November [1798] four of the settlers who had a respite of one or two days between fits started for Walnut Creek to get flour. As they were coasting along the shore below Euclid creek [sic], their boat was wrecked in a storm, and they were obliged to return."
Seth Doan, III himself recalled this incident decades later:
"...a boat was dispatched in the fall of '98 down the lake to a mill ten miles west of Erie, at Walnut creek [sic], for flour, but it was beached and destroyed at Euclid Point."
Impossible to say if John Moss was around at the point to witness the wreck, or if he was on which of his Euclid lots he may have been at the time to do so, but it's doubtful. Regardless, the Doans, and all the other settlers at Cleaveland that summer and fall of 1798 suffered with sickness and starved.
*
Frequent mention is made in the sources on these earliest settlers of Cleaveland of surviving on corn ("...corn-meal was the only diet..."), clearly seen as a second-rate food, and how it could not in their eyes be properly processed ("...their only food unground corn...").
"During the winter and spring [of early 1799] they were without flour, subsisting upon wheat and corn ground in the hand mill and made up Graham fashion."
Graham as in Graham crackers, made from coarsely-milled Graham flour, both named for Sylvester Graham, the early proponent of minimally processed foods and whole grains. This would mean very roughly ground and containing many parts of the husks which otherwise normally would have been sifted out. It may have been better for them than this 19th century source recognized, but if it was primarily corn it still would have meant a diet lacking vital nutrition.
However, at this time, if not conscious wisdom certainly the good luck of having chosen to allow Seth, III along made itself plain:
"...the 13-year-old boy... played the part of hero in the first months of his residence in the hamlet when his uncle's entire family were ill with malaria..."
"Seth Doan was the only one with strength enough to do anything, and he had shakes every day himself. He was able, when the fit subsided, to bring a pail of water, and gather firewood. For two months this boy made the trip to Mr. Kingsbury's after his [own] daily fit was over, and brought a little corn for the sick, which [had been] mashed in a hand mill at Newburg [sic]."
That part of Newburgh Township where James Kingsbury retreated, where Kingsbury Run empties into the Cuyahoga, has been swallowed by the city like most of old Newburgh, and is now in the heart of the Industrial Valley of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. (In the 20th century this very spot would be the scene of Cleveland's notorious Torso serial murders, though that's hardly Kingsbury's fault.) The distance to it from the site of the Doan cabin in the present Warehouse District was about two miles, on footpaths along the east bank of the Cuyahoga River.
"Although Seth himself was also afflicted with the distressing complaint, he kept about, waiting upon his aunt and the children, and doing all that he could to alleviate their sufferings."
"When Seth was unable to go, their only vegetable food was turnips."
If they had not brought Seth, III, if the adults in his life had not feared the life at sea which he was considering would end badly, everyone living in Cleaveland in 1798 might have died.
But the Doans, and the city, survived.
*
"As the cold weather came on, the invalids gradually recovered strength, so that by the first of January, 1799, they were in reasonable health."
Nathaniel Doan went on to fulfill his obligations as blacksmith into the summer of 1799.
"A blacksmith is a very important member of a pioneer settlement. He is soon brought into personal acquaintance with all the neighboring people. His shop becomes a central point for gossip, and for more serious discussions upon public affairs."
"Mr. Doan appears to have been an useful smith, and a good citizen."
But like so many before him he too made his plans to leave the unhealthy little village at the mouth of the Cuyahoga.
In 1799 Nathaniel Doan still had claim as one of the 41 employees of the 1796 agreement on the four scattered lots in Euclid Township, which may explain why he turned his eyes east rather than south into Newburgh as the others fleeing Cleaveland had. The arrangement between the surveyors and the company hadn't fully worked itself out yet, and wouldn't be fully worked out before 1800, which might be why he didn't go into Euclid Township when he left Cleaveland in 1799.
A brief aside regarding the early development of Cleveland is warranted to explain what Nathaniel Doan did next.
First: Cleveland as a city straddling both sides of the Cuyahoga River, while it may have been imagined, was not yet feasible at the end of the 18th century. In its first years here being discussed Native claims persisted west of the Cuyahoga and American settlement wasn't even yet possible there. (Ohio City, Cleveland's original "West Side," would not be annexed to it for generations, not until 1854; Linndale and Brooklyn not until the 20th century.) So, Cleaveland, as originally conceived, faced east, with its back to the Cuyahoga. Settlers' Landing afforded the most expedient spot for immigrants and goods to disembark from the river and the lake. Public Square as a central town common of the kind the founders were familiar with back in New England was situated on high ground above the river in an attempt to escape the malarial mosquitoes rampant in the Flats. The main roads into the hinterland east fanned out from and near it, roads which would become Lakeside, St. Clair, Superior and Euclid.
Next: anticipating that lots near the central settlement at the mouth of the principal river would be the most attractive and thus command premium prices, the Connecticut Land Company owners allotted Cleaveland differently than Euclid and the other townships of the Western Reserve. They plotted out numerous small two acre lots in what is today Downtown Cleveland from the bluff above the Cuyahoga River (roughly West 9th Street in the Warehouse District) out to Canfield Street, what is now East 14th Street in Playhouse Square. The parcel the Nathaniel Doans took over from the Stileses was one such two acre lot. East of Canfield, one entered the "Out Lots" area, where parcels were divided into larger 20 acre sections. This scheme persisted out to Willson Avenue, which is today East 55th Street, beyond which the lots were then of 100 acres out to Cleaveland Township's boundary with Euclid Township.
Out in the ancient forest near the Euclid Township border Nathaniel Doan got his hands on Hundred Acre Lot 402, which was a great one! It was right on the road departing the southeast corner of Public Square that's now Euclid Avenue. In Lot 402 this met the main highway into the Western Reserve along the base of the Portage Escarpment (also now Euclid Avenue, where it turns to the northeast) at the ford of a stream trickling down from the heights of Warrensville Township, today still known as Doan Brook. This natural transportation brake also met another road south, now called East 105th, but originally called Doan Street, connecting the spot to the settlements in Newburgh. So it was a fantastic crossroads and transportation brake which also had fresh water and a source of water power.
Andrew Cozad's otherwise invaluable "East Cleveland, Account of its history" manuscript relates that Nathaniel Doan had at first intended to move into Euclid Township...
"...But upon arriving at what is now called Doane Brook two of their number were taken sick... being detained by sickness they erected a temporary house, it being their intention to continue on as soon as sufficiently recovered, but finding many beautifull [sic] springs and being pleased with the situation, they reconsidered and concluded to make it their permanent house..."
This account contains several dates inconsistent with other consistent sources, and also seems to have Nathaniel's brother Timothy Doan, Sr.'s son, Seth, III, confused as being Timothy Doan, Jr., who in 1799 had not yet arrived in the Western Reserve. Also, as had been stated, the arrangement with the surveyors claims in Euclid Township had yet to be sorted out in 1799, so while it tells an interesting and pretty story it does not appear to be entirely reliable. It also seems far too convenient that Nathaniel Doan just stumbled by happy chance on such a desirable parcel. Probably more accurate is the more concise account found in Crisfield Johnson's 1879 History of Cuyahoga County:
"In the spring of 1799 Mr. [Nathaniel] Doan, entirely satisfied with his city experience, abandoned the lot given him by the company, and moved four miles east, to a point where the ridge road from Kingsbury's struck the 'Central highway,' where he established his home and his shop. The locality was long known as 'Doan's Corners'..."
Most sources place Doan's move from Cleaveland to the Corners in the fall of 1799, and several speak of him preparing the homestead before bringing the family, so it's reasonable to conclude that Nathaniel went out to prepare Lot 402 in the spring and the rest of the family followed from the Cleaveland settlement in the fall.
*
Around this time—it's possible that he was waiting for the clock to run out on the Connecticut Land Company's agreement with the Euclid surveyors on New Year's Day 1800—Nathaniel Doan was also skillfully parlaying the disposition of his lots in Euclid Township. As has been described, his four original lots from the 1796 surveyors' drawing were middling, and scattered around the township. He bartered these away for First Draft Lots 3, 4, and 5, and Second Draft Lot 44, four adjacent tracts forming an inverted "L" of 640 acres inside the western line of Euclid Township, just about two miles east of his Hundred Acre Lot 402.
Individually these lots were already among the best to be had in Euclid Township, and together they were fantastic. On the west line of Euclid they were closest to the main settlement at Cleaveland. Three of them—4, 5 and 44—all contained stretches of the main road, now Euclid Avenue. They also contained routes up into the Heights, paths which would become Lee and Taylor Roads, and one onto the lake plain that became Coit. Lot 44 also contained another valuable ford destined to become the site of the first village in the township, the original village of Euclid, later to be called Collamer, and even later East Cleveland, at the stream which still had yet to be named Nine Mile Creek. The consolidated parcel appears on the earliest maps of Euclid Township in the names of Timothy, Jonathan and Nathaniel Doan. And with this land the Doans, in conjunction it seems with another early settler named David Dille about whom there will be much more to say, would become the empresarios of early Euclid Township.
Maybe it had been the plan all along, or maybe it developed that the Doans' prospects in the Western Reserve, once past the rocky start of 1798, began to look favorable east of the Cuyahoga. In 1801 Timothy Doan—at last Euclid Township's Doan—left Herkimer County, New York, and brought his family even further west to join his younger brother's enterprise in New Connecticut. The sources on Timothy Doan often make note of his age, older than the typical immigrant to the Western Reserve.
"The family consisted of Capt. Timothy Doan, aged 43, Mrs. Doan, 39 years old, and five children, the oldest being a daughter aged 18, and the youngest aged 3 years."
That oldest daughter was Nancy, born 1783. That youngest was son John, born 1798, who would live out his life in Euclid Township through the 19th century. The other children were daughters Mary and Deborah, ages 12 and five, and son Timothy, Jr., age 14. Oldest son, Seth, III, of course, had already been there, with uncle Nathaniel's household, for the last three years.
Genealogy records show that Timothy and Mary Cary Doan lost three children in the 1790s—babies Nathaniel, Job and Mercy—and had the year they came to the Northwest Territory lost another infant, Joseph, born just the year before. Did he die in New York as they were preparing to leave? Or on the way? Or right when they arrived? There's a sad story here which as not been otherwise told.
The Timothy Doans set out in winter, travelling through the Mohawk Valley and reaching the spot where Buffalo, New York, would later rise in February 1801. They must have known about the malaria which had beset brother Nathaniel's family on their journey to Cleaveland and may have calculated that a winter trek would obviate that concern. Furthermore, still largely without roads in through the forest, it was a common practice for the earliest immigrants to the Western Reserve to use the winter-frozen surface of Lake Erie as a clear path in. It was a reasonable assumption, but luck was not on their side that year.
"They traveled in a two-horse sleigh, accompanied by a large sled drawn by oxen, and took with them a cow, some sheep, etc., which members of the party took turns in driving."
"When they reached Buffalo, a disappointment awaited them. It was in the middle of winter, and they had expected to find Lake Erie frozen over so that the journey from Buffalo to Cleveland could be made on the ice close to the shore. But the weather was unusually mild for the season, and nothing but open water stretched as far as the eye could reach."
"It was then concluded that the wisest course would be to have Capt. Doan and son Timothy go on with the horses, oxen, and cattle, leaving the rest of the family to follow when it seemed expedient."
"The experience of the father and son in driving their animals through the wilderness, often swimming ice-cold streams backward and forward—once thirteen times—before persuading all the animals to cross over, was one of almost incredible hardship..."
"...the father pushed forward through the unbroken forest—it being then in the month of February—until he reached the residence of his brother Nathaniel, who had lately settled at Doane's Corners..."
A month later, perhaps waiting to see if the lake would freeze after all, which it never did, the remainder of Timothy Doan's family made an attempt to complete their journey. The lake proved as treacherous for them as it had for Eunice Moss, and the flour boat from Erie, and the Columbia Township settlers.
"[The Timothy Doan family] started in an open boat, accompanied by two white [sic] men and an Indian, and kept close to shore so as to camp on it at night. When off Fairport, a storm swept suddenly down upon them, and before they could land the boat was swamped, and everything in it received a soaking—bedding, clothing, tent, and provisions."
The two White men might have been Nathaniel and Timothy themselves, as the 1914 Pioneer Families of Cleveland relates, "Nathaniel and Timothy Doan were also there, having come on to meet the party." However, this mention of an Indian—from the same Pioneer Families of Cleveland—is even more interesting. It is possible that a Native accompanied the Timothy Doans on their journey into the Western Reserve. Although the Erie had been driven off in their own war with the Iroquois one and a half centuries earlier, and the more recently arrived Native tribes had been dispossessed east of the Cuyahoga by General Wayne and the Treaty of Greenville, fleeting mention of Natives can be found—including in the Doans' own story—in early histories of Northeast Ohio—mostly small, unthreatening, often itinerant bands, mostly in the first decade or so of settlement, prior to the War of 1812. However, if Nathaniel was there "having come on to meet the party," he had already made the trip three times—in 1796, 1797 and 1798—and Timothy had been down the lakeshore and back just weeks before. It seems a guide would hardly have been needed. So maybe this person was an Indian, or maybe this was someone else in the party, some informed speculation about whose identity this essay will soon have more to say.
Meanwhile:
"Mrs. Doan concluded not to risk the safety of herself and younger children any longer upon the lake, but to finish the journey, accompanied by Nathaniel, on horseback. It proved like jumping from the frying-pan into the fire, for not many miles farther on she had to cross a dangerously swollen river in a frail canoe that persisted in landing its occupant a quarter of a mile from the landing."
But following "...a long, wearisome and eventful journey..." "...the family arrived in Cleveland [sic] in April, 1801, and remained with Nathaniel Doan at Doan's Corners until their own log-house was ready for occupancy."
*
"Timothy Doan... brought his family to Cleveland in the spring of 1801, left them there while he built a log house and made a small clearing, and in the fall of that year removed them to his place on the west line of the old township of Euclid..."
This was in First Draft Lot 5, the closest of the Doan Euclid properties to brother Nathaniel's Doan's Corners, where one today will find Doan Avenue meeting Euclid just a block east of East Cleveland City Hall.
"It was located in a hickory grove on Euclid Avenue, six miles [sic] from the Public Square, and on a farm of 320 acres, which Mr. Doan purchased for about a dollar an acre."
"Food was very scarce and difficult to obtain that first winter, and the hickory nuts lying thickly on the ground about their cabin proved valuable adjuncts to their bill of fare."
"For a number of years Mr. [Timothy] Doane found constant employment in cutting down the timber, tilling the land, and building a home for his family."
Uniquely, he seems to have been quite comfortable and friendly with the Indians who yet lingered in the area, even welcoming them into his home.
According to Crisfield Johnson's History of Cuyahoga County:
"At the period of [Timothy] Doane's advent, there were but three log houses where now stands the beautiful city of Cleveland. West of the Cuyahoga was Indian territory, and... Doane found the Indians to be peaceable and good neighbors. They were always received at his house as friends, and on many a night, Indian-like, they would wrap themselves in their blankets and sleep around [his] cheerful fire. In appreciation of his kindness they would frequently present him with some of the best venison or fish which their skill could procure."
Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham's Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve is a romantic document of the Gilded Age prepared for the Women's Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission in 1896. Its pages preserve numbers of quaint family legends of courageous, stoic women civilizing the frontier of Northeast Ohio, many as told by family members grown old by the end of the 19th century who were mere babies and children at its start. The book has much to say about the Doans of Euclid Township from the perspective of Mary Cary Doan, whom it characterizes as one of "the first of many intrepid women who brought from the Eastern States Yankee wit and invention and brave hearts" and who "dispensed... homely comforts... in a homely but picturesque fashion."
It begins:
"At the close of a day in April, 1801, a tired woman might have been seen on horseback, with a baby in her arms, threading the forest path between Painesville and Cleveland. Her escort, mounted upon another horse, carried two little girls. It was Mr. Nathaniel Doane, and the lady was the wife of his brother, Captain Timothy Doane. The baby still lives as a very old gentleman, Mr. John Doane, the only survivor of all those early settlers. This family were just completing a long, hard journey by water and land from Herkimer county [sic], New York State, to this wild settlement in the 'far West,' whither Captain Doane had already preceded them. The log cabin built soon after by him was the first White man's house in the township... and the lady who converted it into a home is still remembered as 'Great-grandma Doane.'"
(Timothy Doan's was probably at least the fourth "White man's house in the township..." after Moss, Burke and the Canandaigua Company. Nevertheless...)
Van Rensselaer Wickham's account of the Doans' frontier home in Euclid Township contains mentions of some artifacts retained there from Timothy Doan's former maritime life. It describes a "...porcelain tankard on the mantel, brought from the West Indies, and cracked with hot whisky toddy..." It also speaks of a "...conch shell which Timothy Doane kept..." which "...could be heard for miles..." being blown during the search for a neighbor lost in the forest.
It also describes the presence of a far more unsettling artifact.
*
Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham's account of the Doans' home in frontier Euclid continues:
"Homely and democratic as was life in the woods, there were distinctions and class lines."
"The little boy's [the aforementioned John Doan's] aid and abettor in mischief was old Jim, a deaf and dumb Negro brought from the West Indies by Captain Doane."
"I remember, says a descendant, my great grandmother Doane, a very old lady when I was a little girl. She used to come into church leaning on the arm of her daughter, Nancy, my grandmother... [with] Old Jim following with the foot stove. After she was seated, he placed it at her feet, and returned to the rear of the church and the servants' pew."
"I also remember that on my visits to my great-great-grandmother Doane I was allowed as a favor to sleep on the couch in her room. A pretty picture was painted in the early morning as old Jim tip toed in to lay the fire in the fireplace."
Van Rensselaer Wickham is not the only source to describe this man. An 1880 account from the Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County contains this passage:
"In the employ of Timothy Doan was a deaf and dumb negro who was supposed to be a run-a-way slave. He was one of the characters of the town, and went by the name of 'Old Um.' By some unaccountable instinct he could always tell when the Fourth of July came round, at which time he would invariably go to town, and get on a 'genuine spree.' In spite of this fact, however, he was a general favorite among the neighborhood in which he lived."
And a family history, The Doane Family and their Descendants, published in 1902, relates the following:
"Before going to Cleveland [sic], Mr. Doane had commanded a vessel on salt water. On one of his trips, perhaps the last one, he brought with him from Cuba a deaf and dumb negro boy, who at the time seemed to be a burden to those with whom he was living. He was commonly called 'Um' and went with Mr. Doane to Ohio where he lived in the Doane family many years until his death."
Alongside these other credible sources on this individual, Van Rensselaer Wickham's "Jim" seems to be either a typographical error, or a transcription of a mis-hearing of the man's moniker of "Um," which was surely derived from sounds he was able to make in light of his handicap.
Without a doubt the most fascinating source regarding this man is The Life Story of Sarah M. Victor. Fully titled The Life Story of Sarah M. Victor, For Sixty Years Convicted of Murdering Her Brother, Sentenced to be Hung, Had Sentence Commuted, Passed Nineteen Years in Prison, Yet is Innocent, Told by Herself, this memoir, published in Cleveland in 1887, is a work of classic 19th century personal narrative, meant to assert Sarah Victor's innocence and describe her wrongful conviction and punishment, as the title explains. Born in Pickaway, Ohio, just south of Columbus, in 1827, Sarah Victor's birth father abandoned his family following a sudden financial disaster. The family was split up, and Sarah was taken in by Myndert Wemple and his wife who, skipping ahead in the narrative of Euclid a bit, would arrive in the township in the coming years, whom Sarah refers to in her book as "Mr. Wemple." Even later, Sarah was sent to Wisconsin, where she encountered an old friend from Cleveland, and in her book she relates the following incident, which, from its context, appears to have taken place in the 1840s. Whether there is any significance to the fact that Wemple shared the trade of blacksmith with Nathaniel Doan is unclear, though it's likely just a coincidence.
The Life Story of Sarah M. Victor:
"During our conversation I related how I had had my fortune told some years before. A Mr. Doan, who lived at Collamer, near Cleveland, had an old colored man who was a deaf-mute, and people used to say that he had the gift of second sight. One day I was in Mr. Wemple's shop (my foster-father was a blacksmith), and old 'Um,' as he was called, came in. As soon as he saw me he began to motion with his hands. I could not understand him, but Mr. Wemple said: 'Um wants to tell your fortune.' The old man then threw out his hands, then reached high up with one, and went through a number of motions, which Mr. Wemple said meant that I would 'cross big water and marry a tall man.'"
In due course she did meet a tall man...
"...and whether old 'Um's' prophecy was the result of 'second sight,' or chance, the tall man was my future husband; the man with whom I spent some years of almost perfect happiness, and afterwards, some full of torture of mind, and misery and neglect."
(Sarah Victor's memoir is an unrelenting tale of woe.)
Was "Um" the so-called "Indian" who accompanied Timothy Doan's family down the lake to Cleaveland from Fairport?
Was the first African American who lived in Euclid Township an enslaved man?
As was the case of Lydia Umberfield in Burton, it was not unheard of for the earliest settlers of what became Northeast Ohio to bring with them illegally to the free soil of the Northwest Territory their chattel from the slave state of Connecticut, and there was little by way of either law enforcement or social disapprobation in the territory to stop them. The church mentioned in the recollections of the Doan descendent recorded by Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham was the Church of Christ in Euclid (much more on it in a later chapter) and the Doans were among its founders. "Servants," as in the servants' pew at the rear of the church, was a common euphemism for enslaved people, and the use of the plural could even suggest there were more than one in Euclid in its first years.
"Um's" legal status may have been a distinction without a difference. He certainly was bound to the Doan family, and never a full independent adult member of the community. Remember that after leaving Connecticut the Timothy Doans had lived several years on the frontier of Upstate New York. "Um" must have been with them there during that period. In all that time he never acquired an actual name. These brief stories about him preserve a condescension, portraying childish mischievousness, and the racist trope of the mysterious African with mystical powers—although as portrayed by Sarah Victor he seems to have adapted to the role which was expected of him. The community suffered his drunkenness on the Fourth of July, though civic and even religious holidays were much more occasions for public drunkenness in the 19th century, and he surely wouldn't have been the only man seen about town drinking to excess on such days.
So was his relationship with Timothy Doan and his family a kindness or exploitation? "Um" "was supposed to [have been] a run-a-way slave." Can this assertion be trusted? Perhaps this was a cover to explain his presence, or just a family legend. When he became associated with Timothy Doan he "...seemed to be a burden to those with whom he was living." So was he in the protection of the family? Or did Mary Cary Doan simply find it inconvenient to do without his services which she had become accustomed to expecting, like Lydia Umberfield and the boy Harry whom she kept enslaved in Burton? Is it all of the above? "Um" could not speak. With his disability he could not have explained the situation from his point of view.
*
After a few years opened the west bank of the Cuyahoga and allowed the cousins to grow to young manhood, the Doan brothers' namesake sons, Timothy, Jr. and Nathaniel, Jr., both joined the Euclid-connected settlement in Columbia Township. Timothy, Jr. would marry Polly Pritchard, the daughter of Columbia Township settler Jared Pritchard and Mary Beard, herself the daughter of the 1798 Turhand Kirtland party's surveyor, David Beard. The Euclid families, often already somewhat intertwined back East, became inextricably blended once the 19th century dawned.
*
Slightly, but only just, on the periphery of the story of the Doans, and Euclid, and the Doans in Euclid, is the figure of Samuel Dodge. Also among the first settlers of the City of Cleveland, Dodge was about 21-years-old when he arrived on the Western Reserve from New Hampshire in 1797 or 1798.
A ship-builder, but with no ship-building industry worth the name yet established in rustic Cleaveland—in 1813 he would be dispatched to Presque Isle and be involved in the construction of Perry's Battle of Lake Erie fleet; more on that to come—Dodge applied his rare skills valuable in a new country to land-bound carpentry. He is credited with having built the first structure which was not made of split logs and mud in what is now the City of Cleveland, a barn, under contract for Samuel Huntington, in the spring of 1801. This farm building, 30 x 40 feet, was located on Superior on land now shadowed by skyscrapers downtown. Cash was short on the Reserve and Huntington disposed of the $300 contract with title to 110 acres of nearly worthless, malaria-ridden, undeveloped land straddling the dirt path leading out Public Square toward all but uninhabited Euclid. "Here, in 1803, [Samuel Dodge] built a log-cabin for his bride, Nancy Doane..." The 20-year-old daughter of Euclid's Timothy and Mary Cary Doan, she and Dodge were married in the spring of that year. At the Dodge/Doan homestead east of Public Square another Cleveland first: "And here was built the first well in town. The stones that walled it in had first been used by the Indians to back the fire-places they occasionally built in their wigwams."
It appears Samuel and Nancy Doan Dodge made their move to Euclid around 1805 or 1806. Charles Whittlesey's 1867 Early History of Cleveland states: "Samuel Dodge had lived on a ten acre lot, but had at that time [in this passage he is referring to the year 1807] taken up his residence at Euclid..." Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham notes their removal: "The young couple lived a year or two in their Cleveland [sic] home, then moved out in the neighborhood of the Doans... Here Mr. Dodge had a large farm lying each side of Euclid Road..." Andrew Cozad's "East Cleveland, Account of its history" manuscript has Dodge arriving in, what at the time it is describing was Euclid, but by 1850 had become East Cleveland, in 1802. This would be before his marriage and in conflict with other sources, though it is possible he acquired land but did not take up residence or move his family in until a later time, as other earlier settlers of Euclid Township would do. It also has him still applying his carpentry skills: "Also Samuel Dodge came to this [East Cleveland] Township in 1802 from New Hampeshier [sic] who erected the first frame house in the township on lot no 5 in 1809." Lot 5 is right on the west line of Euclid where his in-laws the Timothy Doans were living. The 1852 Blackmore map of Cuyahoga County shows "S. Dodge" on what will momentarily be shown to be a rather modest 44 acres on the east branch of Dugway Brook just over the original west line of Euclid Township on the southern third of Hundred Acre Lot 374, splitting the northern 57 with "T. Doan," his father-in-law.
But Euclid and East Cleveland are really not the most interesting things which happened to Samuel Dodge of the Doan clan. Judge Huntington may have felt he had gotten one over on Dodge, dumping some worthless lots on him in exchange for a very practical barn. But Dodge held on to them and was young when he arrived in New Connecticut and had time to let Cleaveland sort out its early problems and for his holdings to mature. After a few years had passed the settlement stabilized. The issues with mosquitoes and the malaria they carried were resolved. Once they were, Cleaveland grew quite quickly during the first half of the 19th century, shed the A and became Cleveland, and the road out of Public Square toward Euclid started on its way to becoming the heart of the city's commercial district. This of course today is Euclid Avenue, in the heart of Downtown, and Samuel and Nancy Doan Dodge's lakefront farm boasting the city's very first well now is all of Playhouse Square and half of the Civic Center. The property in the hands of their sons in the latter half of the 19th century was estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, what would be many millions today. Before 1906, when Cleveland adopted its street numbers system, East 17th was called Dodge Street. Dodge Court remains as a reminder near the Cleveland State University campus between Euclid and Chester.
Timothy and Mary Cary Doan's daughter, Nancy, chose a good husband, though she could not have known at first how well she had chosen. Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham remembers: "Samuel Dodge remained to become one of Cleveland's most valued citizens, as were his sons, and in after years grandsons... Mr. Samuel Dodge took high rank as an intelligent man, and it was found to be a difficult matter to get the best of him in an argument. What his knowledge lacked, his fund of good sense supplied."
Samuel Dodge died in 1854, Nancy Doan Dodge in 1863. Both are buried near Uncle Nathaniel's hapless apprentice Washburn in the Erie Street Cemetery on East 9th Street downtown.
*
For a while—a long while—Doan's Corners boomed.
"Here [Nathaniel Doan] built a small log-tavern and eventually a store, and a little saleratus [baking powder] factory. The latter was a blessing to housewives, who hitherto had been compelled to use lye in place of that article in their cooking."
"The Doan Tavern... was a famous landmark for nearly half a century. It stood by the roadside, where all travel east and west between Cleveland and Buffalo passed it. The little creek flowing through the picturesque woods just east of it... attracted the large parties of pioneers who traveled in company from their New England homes in huge wagons, and driving horses, cattle, and other domestic animals in advance of them. Here, or on the level stretch of ground [nearby]... they would make a halt of a day or two, resting and washing up. It is said that as many as 15 wagons at once would be encamped there. It followed that the Doan Tavern was patronized, more or less, by these travelers."
The opening of the Ohio and Erie Canal in 1825 drew much of the traffic away from the Doan Tavern, and the railroads which came to northern Ohio in the 1850s killed it. But the "level stretch of ground" nearby is now the site of Case-Western Reserve University, and the rest of Lot 402 today comprises a large part of the campus of the Cleveland Clinic. The place where the tavern stood is now occupied by the Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland. Doan Brook drains Rockefeller Park, named for another Euclid Township resident whose story will also be told. It fills the Shaker Lakes, cuts the gorge through Ambler Park and feeds the Wade Lagoon that reflects the Cleveland Museum of Art and Severance Hall. Doan's Corners today is the cultural and, in its post-industrial age increasingly, the economic heart of Cleveland.
"Nathaniel Doan was a man of great piety and of sterling qualities. The first Presbyterian church society in the Western Reserve was organized in his house, and was known as the First Presbyterian church, of which he was appointed deacon."
He became a Justice of the Peace, and officiated most of the first marriages which took place in Euclid Township, including those of several of his own children. He died at the tavern, and relatively young, even for his day, at age 53, in 1815. "His widow, Sarah Adams Doan, survived him nearly 40 years, dying at the age of 82, and outliving most of her children."
They rest together today in a large Doan family plot in Lake View Cemetery.
*
"In later life [Timothy Doan] became prominently identified with many of the public interests of [Cuyahoga C]ounty, and wherever known was recognized as a man of staunch principles and unvarying integrity. He was a justice of the peace [sic] when the county was first organized, and was also a judge of the court of common pleas."
Timothy Doan died in Euclid Township in 1828 at age 70 on his farm on Lot 5. His wife, Mary Cary Doan, lived on another 20 years.
As it developed the western end of Cleaveland Township containing the densely populated and rapidly growing central city of the region soon had vastly different administrative needs than the eastern end, which as yet remained mostly as rural as the rest of the Western Reserve, so a new arrangement was made. In 1848 the southwestern third of Euclid Township—which included all of the Doan lands in Euclid—was severed away to be included in a newly created East Cleveland Township. This area would encompass what are today the entirety of the City of East Cleveland, Ohio, portions of Cleveland Heights, and a large part of the east side of the City of Cleveland. Thus Timothy Doan, Mary Cary Doan and several of their children came to be buried in the East Cleveland Township Cemetery, located near Doan's Corners in University Circle on East 118th Street in Cleveland, where they can be found today.
Seth Doan, III, married in 1808, to a woman named Lucy Clark and together they had three children. "He seems to have remained with and near his uncle after his parents' arrival, and, in 1812, was living at Doan's Corners." He served in the Cleveland contingent of the War of 1812 and as a legacy of this military service is often referred to in the sources on his life as "Major" and "Colonel." He moved back into Cleaveland, apparently satisfied that the hard times of the summer of 1798 were behind it. "He was evidently a man of affairs... He was a director in the first Bank in Cleveland [sic]—the Commercial Bank of Lake Erie—organized in 1816." Lucy died in 1828, and Seth remarried in 1832, to Joanna Wickham (possibly a relation of Northeast Ohio historian Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham, but definitely not a close one). "In 1836 he was living at 35 Prospect Street." Both of Seth, III's wives were originally buried near his uncle Nathaniel's unlucky apprentice Peleg Washburn in the Erie Street Cemetery downtown, but Seth, III's nuclear family has its own plot in section 8 of Lake View Cemetery and he and his wives and their children can all be found there today. Seth Doan, III died in 1846 at age 60.
What can be said about "Um?" He "...lived in the Doane family many years until his death..." Mary Cary Doan died 1848, and "Um" helped her into church when she was "a very old woman..." Sarah Victor described encountering him as an old man in what appears to be the 1840s, so it looks like he was still living in Euclid Township up to that time. If he was a boy when he was brought to the U.S. from Cuba on Timothy Doan's final sea voyage in the mid- to late 1790s perhaps he was born around 1790, give or take, and by the 1840s he was in his fifties, give or take. When he died and where he rests are mysteries. Although perhaps it's unlikely, it is possible he is buried with or near the Timothy Doans in the East Cleveland Township Cemetery, or possibly in the yard of the New Life Cathedral, which as the Church of Christ in Euclid was the first burial ground in Euclid Township, and so holds the remains of many of its earliest settlers. If he is in either of those places his grave is not marked.
*
The Doans are pivotal figures in the foundational history of the City of Cleveland, indeed all of Northeast Ohio, and of Euclid Township. They were early Americans striving to improve their situation as they found it, with the tools they had around them, literal and metaphorical. Their story contains aspects which are complicated, just like the history of the country which they helped to build.
The information in Chapter Eleven is drawn from the following sources:
"History of Euclid." MSS 1, Container 69, Folder 161, WRHS archive, Cleveland, Ohio.
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.
Barrow, William C. The Euclid Heights Allotment: A Palimpsest of the Nineteenth Century Search for Real Estate Value in Cleveland's East End. "This is the digital edition of a Masters Thesis, by William C.
Barrow, for the History Department at Cleveland State University." http://www.clevelandmemory.com/speccoll/barrow/thesis
Butler, John P. Index, The papers of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978.
Daughters of the American Revolution. Index of the Rolls of honor (ancestor's index) in the Lineage books of the National society of the Daughters of the American revolution. Volumes 57-59. Press of Pierpont, Siviter & co., 1916-1940.
Daughters of the American Revolution. Lineage book - National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Vol 57. Daughters of the American Revolution, 1895-1921.
Doane, Alfred Alder. The Doane Family and their Descendants. Compiled and Published by Alfred Adler Doane, 1902.
Dring, Thomas. Recollections of the Jersey prison-ship, taken, and prepared for publication, from the original manuscript of the late Captain Thomas Dring, of Providence, R.I., One of the Prisoners. H.H. Brown, 1829. (H.M.S. Jersey)
Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County. Annals of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga County. V. 1 No. 1-6. Mount and Carroll, 1880.
Fox, Ebenezer. The Adventures of Ebenezer Fox, in the Revolutionary War. Charles Fox, 1848. (H.M.S. Jersey)
Gooch, Laura C. The Doan Brook Handbook. The Nature Center at Shaker Lakes, 2001.
History of Lorain County Ohio, with Illustrations & Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Williams Brothers, 1879.
Johnson, Crisfield. History of Cuyahoga County Ohio. D.W. Ensign & Co., 1879.
Lincoln, Charles Henry. Naval records of the American Revolution 1775-1788. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1906.
Victor, Sarah M. The Life Story of Sarah M. Victor, For Sixty Years Convicted of Murdering Her Brother, Sentenced to be Hung, Had Sentence Commuted, Passed Nineteen Years in Prison, Yet is Innocent, Told by Herself. Williams Publishing Co., 1887.
Watson, Robert P. The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn: An Untold Story of the American Revolution. Da Capo Press, 2017. (H.M.S. Jersey)
Whittemore, Henry. History of Middlesex county, Connecticut, with biographical sketches of its prominent men. J. B. Beers & Co., 1884.
Whittlesey, Charles. Early History of Cleveland, Ohio. Fairbanks, Benedict and Co., 1867.
Wickham, Gertrude Van Rensselaer. Memorial to the Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve. The Woman’s Department of the Cleveland Centennial Commission, 1896.
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.
Hough, Granville W. American War of Independence at Sea website:
awiatsea.com
Regarding Harlequin:
www.awiatsea.com/Hough/Hough%20List%20H-I.html
Regarding Seth Doan, Sr.:
www.awiatsea.com/Officers/Officers%20D.html
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History website:
case.edu/ech
Genealogy websites:
ancestry.com
findagrave.com